Earth Day's six "T"s. Test and Trace #1&2.

On Earth Day 2020 our world appears to be coming apart.  Even without global warming or Covid19 our earthly predicament is worse than one might think.  With only concern for the environment elements of our species health on this special day we will never be able to achieve the worthy goals of sustainable health for all.  A

Some other environmental, economic, political and biosecurity cracks in our security are masked by the deluge of Covid19 news coverage.  Environmental groups will rightfully point them theirs.  Others we've been repeatedly warned about.  

But all this important coverage largely ignores the growing fractures now being worsened by the eight key factors that generated this specific pandemic should make self evident.  

Environmental abuses are only one of these factors.  Understand that they are ALL interconnected.   Ignoring any of them will only contribute to increasing the number, frequency, and the potential severity of future pandemics...which ultimately effects everything.  

The eight factors are briefly:

1. Travel and Trade.

2. Global poverty (lack of clean water, sanitation, basic education, primary health care service, and adequate nutrition)

3. Microbial mutations:

4. Damages to nature:

5. Reliance on mass production technology that amplifies the spread of pathogens when minor errors of human judgment or machine processes occur:

6. Hospital acquired infections, invasive medical procedures, over use/abuse of antibiotics:

7. War, genocide, ethic cleaning, inadequate global response to localized natural disasters.

8. Dysfunctional Government(s).  Lack of political will to invest in prevention or adequate detection, response and R&D systems.

It is vital that we address all of these elements holistically and comprehensively if we are serious about coming out of this pandemic in relative civility -- and avoiding inevitable future pandemics that may not be as civil as Covid19.   

Typical piecemeal reactionary government actions will only result in more deaths and prolonged economic unsustainable spending – and the related difficulties of those already in poverty – while adding millions (potentially billions) of poverty newcomers that are now in the Covid19 pipe line.

A comprehensive global effort is essential for mitigating the economic, environmental, and national security impacts that this one is producing (and every other pandemic will bring in the future).  And more will come. 

Covid19 is the greatest crisis we have seen in generations.  And, it is certain, that that without a miracle, things will get worse before getting better. Prayers won’t hurt -- unless they draw attention away from the science and appropriate government actions now urgently needed.  And, the Golden Rule is needed now more than ever.  Note that it has never really been codified by government laws or appropriations.  Maybe it can’t be - given individual selfish interests.  But it could be with sufficient political will if our species has the wisdom. 

“Flatten the curve” has been the rational go to catch phrase so far.  “Test and Trace” (T2) is next.  Both obvious and urgently needed elements essential to effective actions for saving lives and resuscitating the economy -- and maybe avoiding a global depression.

Unfortunately, each of these two “T”s will encounter daunting barriers that must be overcome to work effectively.  Four of these barriers also start with the letter “T”.

“Trust” is the first.  Can we trust the tests being given?  The test numbers they yield must be reliable for the best use of limited money, materials, and personnel resources.  With multiple companies and countries developing different tests, without reliable testing procedures prior to releasing them into the market, it will be nearly impossible for scientists, the public, or our appointed/elected policy makers to make effective decisions.   If ‘united we stand’ is the rallying cry, our collective strength will only be as strong as our weakest link.  We need the best application of science to gain that trust. 

So we need the “Truth”.  And Covid19 hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories or partisan rhetoric.  Half-truths and even the assertion of fake news undermines our trust in government, science, and academia.  Our only viable defense against mistruths or untruths is trusting in our nation’s fundamental “Self-evident” truths expressed in our Declaration of Independence.  The profound truth that - ‘all people’ are “endowed” with unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  “Self-evident”, should not mean self-invented principles like ‘market forces’, ‘national sovereignty’, or political ideology,  WE need fundamental principles that can actually protect us.  

For both trust and truth to work, we need “Transparency”.   Before this pandemic is over the US government will have appropriated and spent upwards of $6 trillion.  And that is just in reactionary measures.  Who will get these dollars?  Who will pay them back?  The truth is, our children and grandchildren will, if they ever get the chance.  The inherent corruption of our existing political and economic system is a function of the lack of transparency in both.  According to a 2012 statistic there was approximately $32 trillion stashed in anonymous offshore accounts (and some on shore banks!).  These ill gotten gains were stashed there by kleptocrats, oligarchs, drug cartels, violent extremist groups, and wealth capitalists with good lawyers helping them avoid taxes.  

If this money had gone to doing what was proposed by health experts’ multiple times over the past few decades, and at least four times over the last 14 months (according to today’s Washington Post lead editorial). -- we would have had a chance of avoiding much of the harmful health and economic consequences now before us. 

What would be ideal is building a four-pronged global health infrastructure with the first two prongs being the effective capacity for early detection and rapid response to any unusual outbreak.  The third?  Adequate investments in research and development as well the human capital that would be essential to doing what is inevitably needed.  Last, and most important if you believe that prevention pays, would be investing in global infectious disease preventive measures.  According to the Trump maligned World Health Organization (that was never given power to demand from any government - any adequate and accurate information on any disease) just universal access to clean water alone could eliminate half of all the world’s infectious diseases.  

Add sanitation, basic education, adequate nutrition, primary health care services and living wages -- and preventing most of the other disease spreaders like war and genocide – and miracles could be accomplished, or addressed that much better if unpreventable. 

This global humanitarian achievement would also yield self-evident beneficial consequence of increasing global prosperity and human security from other threats -- with one big caveat. These long planned and repeatedly promised goals for humanities development would need to be environmentally sustainable.  Humanity has known this since 1987 when the World Commission on Environment and Development (known as “the Brundtland Commission”) launched “Our Common Future Report”.   It was ignored.  But now, the world has an actual plan.  A set of goals to comprehensively and holistically achieve the best self-evident preventive measures.  Unfortunately Few are aware of the plan. And some disapprove of it.   The plan is achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals comprehensively by the year 2030.  FYI: They are NOT on track. 

World leaders broke their promises made at the 1990 World summit for Children when they unanimously pledged to ‘provide the resources needed’ to achieve a set of 7 basic measurable, affordable and achievable goals by the year 2000.  Then came the Millennial  Development Goals for the year 2015.  Some progress was made but not nearly enough. If we fail in achieving these SDGs we may not get another chance.  The trends of increasing global chaos in health, environment, economics, political tensions, populism, WMD proliferation, wars, refugees and political unrest will not wait for another plan.   

If we learn the right lessons from this current pandemic crisis we will learn two things we should have already known.

One is the findings of the 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”    Presidential Commission on World Hunger, 1980.

The next is the fundamental reality that Albert Einstein noted nearly 30 years before that.  "A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

This brings us to the last T word.  Trilemma.  We strongly desire three things.  Freedom, security, and independence.  We cannot have all three.  We need to pick wisely which two we want.

It’s no coincidence that Thomas Paine recognized the two fundamental reasons for government in his treatise “Common Sense”.  He explained that must depend on others to survive in the world.  And that the singular propose for government is to maximize human freedom and security.  Other wise souls of his day understood that preserving freedom requires being responsible with it. 
  
We need to face the reality that our trilemma is due to our unreasoned faith in the flawed human concept of independence.  It exists nowhere in the known universe.  Yet our current engineered government system (and structures), the U.S. Constitution --  is based on this flawed concept.

Covid19 should wake us up from this travesty of this flawed system that allows and too often perpetrates global injustices.  We are, as a nation, free to do whatever we want. But each of us will never be free of the consequences that will follow.  We should have learned this lesson with HIV/AIDS, 9-11, Ebola…and now Covid19 will try to teach us again.  We can blame China, or take responsibility for ignoring the clear, consistent and noncontroversial warnings that have been given for decades if not millennium.

Abram Lincoln once said our Declaration of Independence is our "Apple of Gold".   Our Constitution is the "Silver frame" around it.

Perhaps it’s time we codify the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” into our Constitution. If 'we the people' united, we could create the political will to tap the ill-gotten $32 trillion in offshore riches to fund the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, without changing the Constitution. Just a change of mind and heart.  

Failing that, our Constitution is ultimately a suicide document.  And those who swear to protect it…instead of our freedom and security, are traitors to God, country, and self.   Things change.  Can we?