Amongst my blessings, I am grateful for your readership.
Although I normally write about Sports (primarily Football and Basketball) nevertheless, Coronavirus has changed the world, and just like I try to do with sport, I try to put forth facts, stats and observations that you may not have had time to research on your own.
Let’s start with the obvious: when all of this settles, there will be a totally new reality. The world will be changed forever. What does that mean? No one knows. Yet this is a time for everyone to reflect and “rethink” the role of the public sector, the private sector, the educational sector, the medical sector, the military sector and even the sporting sector.
There were plenty of warnings:
This isn’t a time to point fingers, but Bill Gates warned of a global Pandemic in 2015 (five years ago), and he used various epidemic episodes including Ebola to support his premise, yet his warnings went largely ignored and now the readiness of governments around the world, and medical systems have been exposed by the Coronavirus Pandemic.
For what it’s worth, Gates prediction is playing out almost “exactly” as he predicted and with dire results. Did anyone listen? By all accounts, the US Pandemic warning system was dismantled (decommissioned if you will) of course it didn’t matter…until it mattered. And now it matters!
And, paying the biggest price is the bottom 98%.
Until now, there has been a tendency for “those that have” to assume that prosperity is their God given right. Perhaps it is, but not at the expense of those who metaphorically “carry the mail” each day, after all someone has to “carry the mail”. The Pandemic has exposed flaws in the global system. There are far too many living on the razor thin edge of existence and at the margin of financial sustainability: essentially the majority of the world’s population is living on a fine line of survival.
The middle class engine that prevailed in World War II has been decommissioned, largely relegated to the fringes of existence, unable to handle an emergency of $400. That must change. If the Middle class is prevented from earning a livable wage or enabled to live with a degree of dignity, then in time all the world’s systems of government will wither and die.
Who is more valuable today: the CEO of a publicly traded Fortune 100 company, or the checkout clerk at the market? Well, frankly, they are both valuable, yet the checkout clerk is normally overlooked in societal terms. But today, our lives desperately depend upon the good health of the checkout clerk and let’s be clear, the checkout clerk I am referring to is merely a symbol in this missive, emblematic of a wider population of “unknowns” who make the system run each and every day. Folks who “carry the mail” while putting their lives on the line.
We can either pay now, or pay later:
This is no time for the wealthiest economies in the world to be “penny wise and pound foolish”.
In the 21st Century, once prosperous industrial cities in Michigan such as Flint, Pontiac, Saginaw to name a few struggle to fix their roads, or tend to basic infrastructures, including their respective educational systems which have been reduced to third world capability. If we are incapable of funding these services, or educating our youth, then the foundations will wither and die.
If “those that have” won’t share with “those that have not” then what are we? It reminds me of a playground scenario when I was a boy, at a time when playground sporting equipment was scarce, and if the boy with the only “bat and ball” didn’t want to play ball and took his “bat and ball” and went home, then nobody played and everyone went home.
I am also reminded of the famous quote by Nicholas Murray Butler about the expert who “knows it all”, and in a variation of that quote is the man who wanted to acquire “more and more” at the expense of others, “…and eventually he got more and more, of less and less, and soon, he had all of nothing!”.
The United States was forced to fund $2 Trillion to prevent the economy from collapsing (that’s 2 thousand Billion…and numerically, it is expressed $2,000,000,000,000)…try to wrap your head around that? It was needed but how did we get to that point? We can’t go to that well often before it runs dry, or until money is worthless. After all, we are already $20 Trillion in debt, so unpreparedness cost the US 10% of our existing national debt, while the cost for countries around the world to prop up their economies is exponentially greater.
Of course, there is no perfect or elegant solution, but there needs to be “civil” discourse: a proper debate to distill the problems and crystallize possible solutions. No government, no form of government and no geography is immune to a Pandemic, or other global catastrophes. In a Global economy, the failure of a single government can set all the Dominoes tumbling.
Are we prepared? Were we prepared? It seems to me that a lot of questions have gone unanswered…and orderliness has been replaced by confusion and chaos. Did you ever think your local Supermarket would be unable to stock Toilet Paper, or that the shelves in your Supermarket would be stripped bare?
Did you ever think “Ventilators, surgical masks, and gloves” would be a “talking point” amongst the man on the street?
Can you believe individual states are engaged in bidding wars, competing for Ventilators?
I spent 35 years in the corporate world, living and working in geographies as diverse as Pontiac, Denver, Orange County (CA), Houston, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Melbourne (Australia) and all points in between, and sadly the Coronavirus Pandemic has exposed the inability of global economies to work in harmony: and it has exposed an absence of coherent contingency plans.
I also proudly served in the 2nd Infantry Division (11 Bravo, for those who are familiar with military jargon) during the Viet Nam era, yet I was posted on the DMZ in Korea. And while we weren’t engaged in combat, nevertheless it was a combat zone and we were technically at war, and a mistake at any point could ignite a global conflict. Armament was pointed in both directions: North & South. So preparedness and contingency plans were at the core of our Mission.
The very difference between peace and international conflict was the existence and execution of “coherent” war plans and contingency plans: in other words, what is our Mission? And what do we do, if Plan “A” fails? We trained daily to execute the plan if (and when) it was needed.
Yet in time of peace, Coronavirus has exposed that various sectors within our government are unclear regarding our Mission, and our contingency plans are lacking.
Take care of those who “Carry the Mail”:
Coronavirus has delivered us to a new reality, and it has reminded all of us that every system is fragile, yet preparedness is the glue. If we don’t pull together, we will be irrevocably pulled apart. Life is a “team game” and I hope everyone who reads this will take a portion of each day to give back to those less fortunate. To give a bit of recognition each day to those “who carry the mail”.
And I also hope everyone who reads this will take a portion of each day to let your voices be heard (regardless of your political persuasion). Governments work for the people, but if the people remain silent, the Captain of any ship is capable of scuttling the ship by running it aground if they ignore the charts prepared by their crew.
At the bottom line:
I wish for each and every reader and your families the best of good health and financial stability during this global Pandemic, and when everything subsides, I hope we are able to “put all the pieces back together again” for the betterment of all humanity.
