The One Thing We Learn From History

I remember it like yesterday when my high school history teacher opened the class with the title of this blog and then said: “is that we learn nothing from history!”

The regional newspaper covering Jacksonville put an Op-Ed piece from their historical files about the summary of what the town learned from an outbreak of Yellow Fever ins 1888.  I summarize it here because it is stunning in its clarity of what we should be learning through and about our Covid-19 experiences today:

Lesson 1: Look for advice from scientists, not politicians.

One of the key lessons I would take away from how Jacksonville elites dealt with the epidemic, is that that expert scientific advice had not actually penetrated the local political level of Jacksonville.  They believed, and there’s somewhere an article in The Florida Times-Union, that what causes disease are animalcules, tiny animals.  Their recommendation was the exact wrong recommendation. They said to leave buckets of water around your house to breed mosquitoes to eat the animalcules. It said you should do this, and people did it. The mosquitoes became vectors of infection.  There are experts. They do know what to do. They’ve studied this extensively for years. There is knowledge we should not politicize, and we should let certain kinds of experts lead in this situation.

Lesson 2: Quarantines, by their nature, create class conflict.

Quarantines have always pitted workers and bosses, citizens and merchants, industrialists and public health advocates. The people who make money on trade and commerce don’t want to see things shut down. They will fight and fight and do what they can to subvert quarantines and fight them. When they do so, all they do is prolong the misery. All they do is make things worse, even though they take a financial hit in the end. If Jacksonville had been able to figure out the quarantine more quickly, they might’ve been able to get through yellow fever quicker than they did. The city government was really still weak. The idea that government should have powers to intervene and declare that everyone should stay indoors, couldn’t have happened in the 1880s. Instead, they needed buy-in from merchants who had to volunteer to shut down.

That didn’t happen.

 Lesson 3: Beware of philanthropy replacing the government.

Private actors who aren’t the government used fundraising, charity, and philanthropy to displace Jacksonville city government. When the yellow fever hits, everybody who has the resources to bug out and leave, go to New York and form the Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary Association. They raise half-a-million dollars in relief funds, which is a lot of money in 1888.  They then use this money to run the government by fiat. Once the yellow fever was done, it wasn’t that hard to go to Gov. Francis Fleming and say you can remove home rule and put us in power because we’ve shown we can do it.

The third lesson is: There will be moments where people swoop in and pretend to fix things and will use it to exercise control.

I think we should all heed this advice.  The truth is now emerging about China and the World Health Organization.  We should study the results from Sweden vs. Norway … the blog from last week … and think carefully about who we elect to make sweeping decisions for our society.  And, most importantly, we should be wary of people who swoop in and pretend to fix things only so they can exercise control.

Are we Missing the Obvious?

OK, we are all now having our lives disrupted and perhaps threatened by something that has been repeatedly known to be a time bomb in the health industry: these exotic foods markets in Southwest China. This is far from a new issue and has repeatedly been reported in the medical journals.

So, here is the “blinding flash of the obvious” question we should all be asking here in the US and around the world … and even in China: Why does the Chinese government permit these markets to exist? They locked down the country as a result and are now prancing around the world offering free masks and doctors as an olive branch.

What is going on here? Do they permit these idiotic things to exist so they can validate their authority and control when outbreaks occur? Or, as Sigourney Weaver asked when she returned from years in hyper-sleep in the movie Aliens: “Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?”

Sorry, but the right answer here is obvious isn’t it?!?

Wishful Thinking

This worldwide health issue has all of our lives disrupted … not because of what is happening now, here but because we have, as a nation, decided to do something to avoid what is a known terrorizing risk.

There is a lot to be learned from all this.  We will begin to think differently about many social constructs that perhaps are silly because they expose us to colds and the flu.  After all, many churches “concentrate” our senior citizen populations and they are the most at risk for the worst medical outcomes.  Many of us stopped shaking hands and hugging in church during the flu season.  Things to think about for sure.

We will also be a bit less cavalier about the fragile segment of our population …  those who are working poor who normally never get much notice here because they just quietly go to work providing many of the goods and services we take for granted … until now.

And, of course, we have those who predate on situations like this.  These are the despicable segments of our society and the world who take advantage of this to profit.

Finally, this also brings out the creativity in society that is refreshing and uplifting … unless it is purely wishful thinking.  An example of this was sent to me yesterday.  And, no, just because it works on avocados does not mean it will work on toilet paper!

Be safe and be wise … we will get through this working together as a nation.

 

 

 

The rest of the story?

I always enjoyed the broadcasts of Paul Harvey on things you and I always took for granted.  I guess, as an engineer, I am a bit suspicious of anyone who tells me there are simple answers to seemingly complex questions.  I guess I intrinsically know there are dimensions to life that are simply unanswerable in simple terms.  I am OK with that, and I hope you are as well.

It is OK to say we don’t know while we seek to know.  I remember the first problems with windmills killing birds and bats which then resulted in more careful siting rules.  Now wind turbines are built so tall and spin with blade tips that are traveling so fast we probably can’t find the shreds of any bird they have hit.  So, do we now know how many birds or bats we kill?

Lately, I have been reading several articles indicating that our largest solar arrays are killing birds because the birds think they are landing on water.  Here is a carefully written article on the subject from a noteworthy source: Scientific American.

Our house has killed several birds because of our large windows that make approaching birds think another bird is in their territory. Years ago we had a bird that would repeatedly strike one of our picture windows at certain times in the morning when it saw its reflection.  It finally killed itself in one of those attempts.

What happens if we deplete a species of bird so much that it becomes environmentally threatened?  Haven’t we seen evidence in the past that snail darters and peregrine falcons can alter the acceptability of power plant sites?

I know, all we need to do is erect a bird proof fence high enough to discourage birds from flying over the solar farms.

Why is it we think we can control nature?

 

Impossible Pork

Perhaps you have tried the meatless hamburger at Burger King and elsewhere.  I have and it isn’t all that bad … really.  So, I guess I wasn’t surprised to see the same company to introduce a plant-based pork version this month.  And, as you listen to the CEO you can see the plan for a truly diverse meatless array including chicken, fish, and on from there. Listen to David Lee, CEO, Impossible Foods.

It is fascinating to me that we have rushed into this without any long term testing to side effects.  Maybe it is because it is made from plant materials.  But, if a drug company introduced its products with this kind of reckless abandon the lawsuits when something went wrong would bankrupt the company … and perhaps rightfully so.

So, why the rush to adopt the meatless alternative?  It seems to me that it is in part due to the public opinion and advocacy group fever over having an alternative that could have a huge impact on the environment.  They all know cows and pigs and even chickens raised on grain are a huge user of water and are unsustainable as the world population grows. We also can see the consequences of doing nothing on the destruction of the Amazon.

But, my other question is whether “Impossible Pork” is kosher?  Perhaps, given it is plant-based, it should be.  But, if you call it pork and pork is specifically forbidden in the Old Testament, does that make it wrong to eat?  For that matter, a cheeseburger is not kosher either, but would an “Impossible Cheese Burger” be OK?  How can the process of declaring it kosher happen when the Rabbi in charge can’t see how it is made?

Oh, the problems of modern technology!  Oy Vey!