We are at war. We can beat Covid19 but we must learn and adapt quickly.
What will you do? It's our memes against Covid19 genes.
What will you do? It's our memes against Covid19 genes.
Task
#1: Understanding this “war”. Our Memes vs their Genes.
Meme:
Anything transferred between humans that
is not genetic (DNA or RNA in origin).
It
can be an idea (capitalism or interdependence), image (American flag or Micky
Mouse), ritual (Macarena line dance or an election), or ideal (‘the Golden Rule’
or ‘market forces will solve it’). It
spreads via human communication by any means to anyone who receives it, if they
want it or not, or if they like it or not.
Memes can be a profoundly powerful tool for doing great good or
catastrophic harm.
Gene:
A segment of DNA or RNA shared between
humans in close contact via air, water, food or other physical sharing of
things. Spreading of genes can be
accidental or unintentional (pandemics or accidental food contamination,
hospital acquired infections, sexually transmitted diseases, shaking hands, or exposure
to mosquitoes. Or exchanged intentionally. Making babies, injecting vaccines, or
launching a biological weapons attack. Again,
Genes are profoundly powerful multi use tools.
Ultimately,
both memes and genes are just information.
And both can be controlled if properly understood globally and then
effectively applied.
Many properly
view our fight against Covid19 as a war.
A war against infectious disease - humanities greatest killer. Those
who study war know Sun Tzu’s ancient book “The Art of War” and its number one
rule: “Know your enemy and yourself”.
To
win this war we must understand the virus and learn how to control it. And, at
the same time we are fighting it the best we know how, we must understand one of
our greatest weaknesses that George Lakoff calls ‘direct causation’ thinking. Our primal
thinking that react directly to a threat, instead of doing deeper “systemic causation’
thinking… which can identify the threats root cause, which can lead to actions
that prevent the threat before it becomes one.
All
forms of human communication spread memes constantly. “Social
distancing” was unheard of 3 months ago.
Today it’s morphing into a more accurate meme of ‘physical distancing’
which recognizes that our connecting by social media will be vital to winning
this war. If you knew someone who had
heard of neither of these memes you understandably might be shocked. And, feel threatened when people are not
acting on this meme.
Knowing
these types of people exist generates another meme. Rational “Fear”. This is another meme which spreads very
rapidly for obvious biological reasons. The direct reaction to this fear is boosting
guns ales and hording of toilet paper. But
the ‘fear’ meme can used to bring people together if they understand our
systemic failures in preparing for this inevitable threat. And more importantly preventing the next. And
at least being better prepared for it.
Conclusion: Fear is an exponential disrupter meme when our
minds gravitate ‘directly’ to a threat. But
fear can also be an exponential connector meme, when it moves people beyond the
primitive ‘direct’ reactionary thinking we normally do – into the deeper
systemic thinking now needed - at every level.
Example
1: President Trump renamed Covid19 the “Chinese Virus”. According to a Congresswoman on Cspan this
week, there has been over 1000 acts of violence against Asians in the US (of
any nationality) in just the last 4 weeks. Attacks are now averaging about 100 per day. The spread of this fear meme is dangerous
and may be lethal. Dr. Fouchi, now the
most trusted man in America, needs body guards because of a ‘deep state’ meme,
pushed by conspiracy ‘super spreaders’.
There
have been many references to the ‘1918 flu’ as the “Spanish Flu”. In reality scientists believe it originated on
a Kansas farm near a military base. “The name of
Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918)
where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918). However, a first
wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in
military camps throughout the US.”
The
spread of Trump’s meme “Chinese virus” misinforms people. It has led to violence.
Every time we hear the “Spanish Flu”
meme we can use it to demonstrate how meme’s can be both misleading and dangerous.
Here are a few meme’s that are vital to understanding Covid19, responding
to it, and preventing its spread. As
well as preparing for future strains and preventing other pandemics, -- or better
preparing for them and other biosecurity threats we cannot prevent.
1.
“SARS-CoV-2” is
the technical name of the virus that causes the ‘Covid19’ disease.
2.
SARS-CoV-2 is a “Novel corona virus”. ‘Novel’ means it is new to our species that
came from one or more other species -- and no human has immunity to it…unlike
other corona viruses we have long been exposed to.
3.
“Genetic drift”
means that viruses (especially RNA based like Covid19) change, slowly…but
potentially enough that it will continue to spread globally even after an
effective vaccine is created to protect against the original strain.
4.
“Herd Immunity” refers
to a population that has been exposed to, and recovered from a virus, or been successfully
vaccinated to a degree that the bad virus is no longer spread under relatively ‘normal’
conditions. Herd immunity can become irrelevant if/when a virus mutates to the
degree it can re-infect a population. Things
change. Can we?
5.
“Comprehensive” response
or approach. Without a national or
globally coordinated response we aid the genetic spread of Covid19. And any
other global threat we face to our freedom, security and prosperity.
6.
“Systemic approach”. Everything
in the known universe (created by nature or human engineers) is made up of
systems and structures that are based on certain principles. Nature’s engineering is based on fundamental
principles. These can be recognized as “the
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”. Then
there are alternative principles that are created by human minds. Principles like “peace through strength”.
7.
“Fundamental principles” are
“self-evident” “Truths” like gravity. Or,
‘the golden rule”. Violate these and its
inevitable things will not go well.
Alternative principles like “independence” can work well for a while in
making human systems and structures…but inevitably, if they have ignored fundamental
principles, they may end catastrophically.
Regarding the control of any infectious disease
it is important to understand they do not abide by alternative principles like
nationality, states’ rights, or the economic law of supply and demand. Leaving each US hospital or all 50 states to compete
in acquiring respirators or ventilators isn’t going to end well for all 50 states.
The same is true in competition between
nations for similar essentials. Essentials
that policy makers knew were inevitably going to be needed. See warnings below.
“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.
It specifically warned about the future
consequences if we ignored the global injustice of hunger. “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is
the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The
anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats
to international order… Neither the cost
to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be
derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured
in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding
the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world
begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other
critical global threats as the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and other
non-renewable resources, environmental hazards, pollution of the seas, and
international terrorism. Calculable or not, however, this combination of
problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as
advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”
The commission also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and
overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S.
national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the
advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate
national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The
Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed
might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military
force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only
coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”
INFECTIOUS
DISEASES as a threat to U.S. National Security:
1. Emerging
Infections; Microbial threats to health in the United States
1992,Lederberg, Joshua, Oaks, Stanley C., & Shope, Robert E., eds, National
Academy of Press, Washington DC. [On-line] http://www.nap.edu/books/0309047412/html/index.html
2. Addressing Emerging Infectious Disease Threats: A Prevention
Strategy for the United States 1994, Center for Disease Control (CDC).
[On-line] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031393.htm
3. Infectious
Disease – A Global Health Threat 1995, Committee on International Science,
Engineering, and Technology Working Group (CISET), [On-line] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/406080
4.
America’s Vital Interest in Global Health 1997,
Board on International Health, National Academy of Press, Washington DC,
[On-line] http://books.nap.edu/catalog/5717.html
5. The
Global Infectious Disease Threat and its Implications for the United States.
Jan. 2000, NIE 99-17D, [On-line] https://fas.org/irp/threat/nie99-17d.htm
6. Biosecurity: A comprehensive Action Plan. June 2006. Center
for American Progress.
7.
Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future
(GHRF Commission) Report title: “The
Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious
Disease Crises” January 2016. https://nam.edu/initiatives/global-health-risk-framework/?utm_source=National+Academy+of+Medicine&utm_campaign=9c986f06c9-GHRF+report+release&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b8ba6f1aa1-9c986f06c9-129670121
Credible Books:
1.
The Coming Plague First
published in 1994 in hardcover by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, THE COMING PLAGUE: Newly Emerging
Diseases in a World Out of Balance was a New York Times bestseller in 1994-5.
Laurie Garrett researched and wrote THE COMING PLAGUE for ten
years, starting in the mid-1980s when the very premise of the effort was highly
controversial. https://www.lauriegarrett.com/the-coming-plague
2. WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP
CATASTROPHES By Richard A. Clarke and
R.P. Eddy, 2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/ The first 8 chapters detail the millions
of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and
man-made – due to our failure to act on the advance warnings of experts. The last eight chapters estimates the billions of lives and trillions of dollars that
could be saved if humanity collectively works to prevent the other dire
warnings now given regarding other threats (some existential). Chapter 11 “The
Journalist: Pandemic Disease”. Chapter
9 outlines the three cognitive reasons why humans ignore such warnings.
SUMMARY: Human engineered or
nature diseases can and will have debilitating economic, social and political
consequences on every nation. These
growing health threats are inevitable.
The only debate is about their magnitude of impact and origin. Those who suggest the threat is minimal … don’t know history or fully understand the trends in our
current global situation.
We have three basic choices.
1. We can wait until the infectious reaches our lungs, home or community
before taking action. The attacks on 9-11 provides us with a mild example
of consequences of the expensive approach of ignoring warnings to a persistent
global threat. (Mindset: It hasn’t happened so far…don’t
worry about it.)
2. We can try to stop the threat at our boarders. Our success in
stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, illegal drugs or weapons across our
borders gives one an idea of how effective this approach will be. (Mindset: Our
Federal government and our national sovereignty will protect us.)
3. We can go to the source of the threat and create systems that
facilitate both prevention and adequate early detection and response efforts.
(Mindset: We are one human family. We hang together or we hang
separately. See 17 Sustainable Development Goals).
In the closing paragraphs of The Coming
Plague (1995), aptly entitled “Searching for Solutions”, Laurie Garrett writes:
The human world was a very optimistic place
on September 12, 1978, when the nations’ representatives signed the
Declaration of Alma Ata. By the year
2000 all of humanity was supposed to be immunized against most infectious
diseases, basic health care was to be available to every man, woman, and child
regardless of their economic class, race, religion, or place of birth.
But
as the world approaches the millennium, it seems, from the microbes’ point of view, as if the entire
planet, occupied by nearly 6 billion mostly impoverished Homo sapiens,
is like the city of Rome in 5 B.C. “The world really is just one
village. Our tolerance of disease in any
place in the world is at our own peril,” Lederberg [Nobel laureate for
discovery of DNA] said. “Are we better
off today than we were a century ago? In
most respects, we’re worse off. We have
been neglectful of the microbes, and that is a recurring theme that is coming
back to haunt us.”
In
the end, it seems that American Journalist I.F. Stone was right when he said, “Either we will learn to live
together or we will die together.”
While
the human race battles itself... the advantage moves to the microbes’ court. They are our predators and they will be
victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn to live in a rational global
village that affords the microbes few opportunities. It’s either that or we brace ourselves for
the coming plague.”
There solutions:
1.
Global enforcement of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
2.
Funding and achieving the 17 United Nations 17 Sustainable
Development Goals.
3.
Pray that God sleeps forever.
“I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Thomas
Jefferson
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