A Timely Warning !

Spare a thought for the many Australians stuck overseas by the Coronavirus shutdown of the airline industry.  We were used to unlimited travel and for so many families a visit with grandparents involves a trip to another country.  Closed borders were an unheard of reality until this pandemic changed all the rules.

The salvation in sight seems to be vaccines that are about to come onto the world market and eliminate the infections that have thrown world finance into a tail spin, but it will be well into 2021 until the numbers who have taken the jab will deliver convincing figures.

This was the first time in modern history that all the countries of the world faced a common threat.We think it originated in the " wet markets " of Wuhan, China where an assortment of native animals are butchered for human consumption.  Science suspects that the crossover occurred from bats and warns that unless strict hygiene is practised we may see a deadly version arise in the future to deliver a death toll similar to the " Black Death " of the Middle Ages.

The world population is fast heading towards ten billion people and we are packed together in major cities.  The spread of the coronavirus illustrated the ease with which our advanced standard of living spread the disease from country to country.   Some were more effective than others in putting counter measures swiftly in place and this is reflected in the death toll.

Surely, there should be a lesson learned with this close shave with mass destruction that fate delivered to our planet's door.  When the disease broke out in China the authorities suppressed that information passing to other countries and as a consequence infected travellers spread the contagion.  It very quickly became a world pandemic.

Individual countries took varying actions to halt the spread and some were more effective than others.   At the one time, concerted action was so badly needed the United Nations, the body reprtesenting world countries was locked in acrimoney and unable to implement a cohesive policy.  As a result, this coronavirus quickly became a world event.

We would be wise to look to the future and heed the warning that science predicts.  Our reliance on the animal world for our food supply will eventually bring forth new diseases that will quickly go viral.  It is not unreasonable to expect that the end result will be the decimation of the human populationn of this planet.  Such an eclipse would throw society back to the dark ages.

Perhaps that is inevitable.  If we overpopulate planet earth we invite tragedy by way of either war or disease and we need to learn our lesson by returning to a new start, or we learn to mend our ways, control our numbers and take the steps necessary to live in harmony with the natural balance.

In 1918-19 we had a warning from what we called the " Spanish Flu " which subsided for reasons unknown and was quickly forgotten.  We would be unwise to treat the visit of the coronsvirus in a similar manner.

The next pandemic may be the one that takes the world back to the days before the industrial revolution.  The warning could not be clearer !