My Blog Week: March 22 to March 28

A Word on the Week

Part and Parcel

It’s not a question of whether the environmental benefits of coronavirus lockdowns count as an upside to the pandemic.

We’re far enough along in this that we need to consider the future. Even the idea that a bad response can be muddled into an eventual success is too much a luxury, bearing in mind that nothing prevents coronavirus from simmering down and returning in a fresh wave next winter. Refugee and homeless populations, people denied care or too isolated—from trust for authority and/or receipt of information—to obtain care, raise the possibility of bodies in waste areas, abandoned buildings, roadsides, lying undiscovered…

The virus was transmitted first from animals to humans; it could go from humans back to harbor in an animal host. 

Quarantines in reverse aren’t economically bearable. The U.S. can draw on resources now to produce this record-breaking stimulus package, which still falls short and leaves millions without help. Properly, at the signs of an epidemic breaking, we should identify who has it, and quarantine the carriers. Shutting indoors all the people who might potentially become carriers…well, we have learned (are still learning) how that goes. We’ll need new laws to prevent lax officials from slowing the next effort; we’ll need stockpiles and distribution mapping, new protocols, a panel of epidemic specialists required to be given oversight of the response plan.

The ominous thing about COVID-19 is the spectrum of severity this disease produces. While many don’t need hospitalization, what trajectory will play out for you if you get sick is, aside from known vulnerabilities, often surprising, and in a bad way. Smoking and vaping, working in transportation, in agriculture, in any dust or fume-producing industry, are compromising to people’s respiratory health. But also, the air and water quality in a lot of countries have been truly miserable. Let’s not let this lesson go by; let’s recover and then insist on addressing what is as clear as the blue sky, so much irrefutable proof of the killing nature of fossil fuels.