CORONAVIRUS BLESSING
For all its inconvenience and maddening unknowns, the silver lining to the coronavirus is a collective understanding of some new things. It has brought into sharper focus new opportunities and perhaps new enthusiasm for healthy change. Here are some things that seem to be permeating our cultural conscience, perhaps for the first time.
1. Exhaust and waste, especially in urban areas, does in fact affect air and water quality. That air and water could clear and clean this fast offers incredible hope for sustained environmental remediation. We can do this. It also shows that if we get behind initiatives, broadly, it can literally change our world. That's cool.
2. Home centric learning and work is possible for a large sector of the population, perhaps 30 percent. Commuting is a waste of time and resources so getting serious about leveraging the internet's multi-faceted capacity pays big dividends. You don't need two cars; you don't need to live in a dorm; you don't need to build another expressway and you don't need to fight for parking spaces. You don't need all those high rise office buildings. Home schooling is a viable option so all those local bond issues for building new concrete structures are unnecessary. Shopping on-line for doorstep delivery is a win in many ways.
3. Loading up dependency on any foreign country is not wise. How many of us will forever remember the moment we learned that 96 percent of pharmaceuticals sold in the U.S. are made in China? I could hear an audible "aha" at that moment; the lights went on in our collective heads and as a country I could hear people saying "never again." Bring it home, or at least spread it out and diversify the dependency portfolio.
4. Government officials are untrustworthy. From wildly inaccurate computer models to Covid-encouraging edicts (like reducing New York's mass transit schedule that over-stuffed the subways and busses), the pontificating from on high shows ignorance or incompetence or both. A new appreciation for federalism and state sovereignty, localized, customized policy, and self-reliance is a wonderful thing. Only idiots put their faith in Fauci. Decentralize decisions. Hurrah for states' rights and the 50-state experiment.
5. Renewed appreciation and interest in health. People want to know how to build immune systems, how to eat better, where to find local authentic food. The breakdown of the industrial food system with all its alleged efficiencies has been a wake-up call as people source food from local farmers and smaller brands. This has been a godsend to struggling small farmers seeking a piece of market share; wow, we've got the attention now.
6. Self-reliance in all its forms. People who never would have considered gardening just three months ago are now digging around and planting seeds in their backyards. Small chicken flocks dot the urban and suburban landscape by the thousands; these birds lay eggs and eat kitchen scraps: food and reduced waste stream. What's not to love about that? People selling chicken processing equipment for small timers, canning equipment, and books on homesteading have never seen anything like this. It's a tsunami of interest like the back-to-the-land hippie movement of the Vietnam era. It's Woodstock at home; that's cool.
7. Renewed concern about how easily people give up their freedoms for some perceived security. A renewed liberty movement--dubbed by the media as protestors(don't you love media group-think?)--is sweeping the nation. When we put preachers in jail and prisoners on the street, people begin scratching their heads, and that's a good thing. How dare someone tell me my business is nonessential? How dare someone tell me I can't assemble with friends? As we've been de-individualized to a bunch of masked non-identifiable bipeds, many of us wonder what people will swallow next. It's good to be afraid of tyranny.
What is your blessed takeaway from the pandemic?