Pray that God sleeps forever

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.

WORLD HEALTH DAY:  April 7, 2020 “From Intervention to Prevention”  Health first for everything (mind, body, spirit, personal relations, environment, economy, democracy, generational decisions…).  

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.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2006/06/28/2051/biosecurity-action-plan/

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

World Health Day April 7: Urgent call to host Webcasts.

Proposal for World Health Day (April 7, 2020) webcast conferences on “Preventing and Preparing for the next Pandemic: $ trillions available for funding the 17 SDGs.”

Memes can be more contagious as virus genes.  And memes spread faster. 

“Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The world has usually looked to the U.S. for leadership in times of crisis. The rapid evolution of Covid19 events however has dramatically narrowed the vision of every individual, institution, nation, news source, and action proposal to reactionary efforts.  Obviously, we want to reduce the number and likelihood of deaths, job losses, travel restrictions, shortages of critical supplies, and a global economic depression. But something else needs to be considered: Preventing and preparing for the next pandemic — even while engaged in grappling actively with this crisis.   

The U.S. and China will continue to compete for dominance in a post Covid19 world. Both systems were slow in reacting to this virus, and now both have played useful roles in reacting to it. China’s authoritarian response slowed its spread there and the U.S. economic response is mitigating it here.   But both governments’ limitations – economically, politically and environmentally – have been exacerbated by the fact that their efforts have been made in national isolation. Global cooperation is vital to the success of future efforts to confront the inevitable next crisis. For the sake of sustaining freedom, security and prosperity, those global efforts must begin now.   

Because the logistical power of the military is unmatched, they have a critical role to play in these efforts. In a worst-case scenario, even police powers may need to be marshaled.   Comprehensively utilizing the U.S. military’s global reach in service of healthcare research and delivery of clinical services would deploy a global system that is already in place – and therefore has the potential to prevent and respond better to other global upheavals the world cannot prevent.  

Here are the military’s four fundamental tenets:

1.   Early detection

2.   Rapid Response

3.   Research and Development

4.   Prevention

This comprehensive approach is the essential core of any successful response to future global threats.  Each person, organization, corporation, and nation in the world has a role to play. And, there are basically three places to act.  First, where we are now (in our body, home, city) which can be extremely costly in lives and dollars - uncoordinated and late.  Second, at the political lines we have drawn to separate us and attempt to restrict flows across those borders (also expensive and rarely unsuccessful.  Or last, at the origin of the problem where resources are usually most cost effective. 

Acting in cooperation on a global level is demonstrably one of the most difficult challenges for humans.  Our minds focus on the close and immediate problems rather than the more distant systemic weaknesses that exist at multiple levels (city, state, nation and global). The paradox is that we are all hyperlinked in our irreversibly interdependent world. Our lives and our freedoms depend on the health of systems and structures at every level of our existence.  Every natural and human engineered system known to exist are irreversibly interconnected.  Our minds and our government policies see them as independent problems to be solved.  This is the critical concept our minds must overcome, and then act on, if we truly value - and want to preserve - our cherished freedoms, our security and sustainable prosperity. 

Viruses are the tiniest and most powerful structures that link us all together. The greatest advancements in human history came after the invention of the microscope, which revealed a formerly invisible enemy.  That discovery exponentially increased human understanding of the natural world we all inhabit.   However, microscopes could not see viruses. They remained invisible, despite the enormous death tolls they caused. 

Today we can see them. And we’ve known for well over 100 years we can sometimes protect ourselves against them. Before the U.S. became a nation, our continental army’s strength was boosted by the knowledge that exposure to cow pox protected individuals against the dreaded smallpox. 

By the late 1970s, smallpox had been eradicated from the planet — after killing more people in the previous 70 years than all the wars, revolutions, genocides and homicides during the entire century, combined.  That global medical miracle was funded by the United States at a cost of just $32 million, spent over a 10-year period.  To put it in perspective, the U.S. Government Accounting Office documented the cost savings to U.S. taxpayers from that one-time $32 million global investment at over $17 billion: a staggering profit in terms of global health, economics and security.  

Imagine the present-day dollar savings alone if China or the U.S. had developed a Covid19 vaccine before the virus started to spread. Or, if a global primary health care system had already been established to identify it within days after it first emerged.  In contrast, the U.S. Congress has just passed a $2 trillion package (others are likely to follow) for the sole benefit of the U.S. economy. That amount doesn’t include other costs already associated with our slow reactions to the outbreak — or virtually any funding to mitigate the virus’ spread outside our borders. It appears that the lessons that the U.S. might have learned from the crucial role it played in the global eradication of smallpox have been forgotten. The likely unrest caused by increasing economic hardships caused by Covid19 will inevitably have global effects on more violence, crime, refugees, hate and expenses that a comprehensive international response could have prevented.

Have we learned anything since 2008? Will bailing out the airlines aid our Covid19 response? After the 9/11 attacks an airline passenger’s tax was added to pay for increased airline security measures. Now we can see how short-sighted that “security” policy was, as we realize that all aircraft are virtual incubators for Covid19 contagion. With more foresight, high airline profits could have been devoted to strengthening global primary health, basic education, and essential food systems wherever those planes land around the globe. 

Humans, like fire departments, are generally good at responding to emergencies. But, like fire departments, when the figurative flames have gone out, we go home. Our brains seem to be hard-wired to respond to immediate, dramatic threats. Analyzing less dramatic elements in order to anticipate larger, more dangerous threats is a much bigger challenge for our Pleistocene brains. But, if we have any desire to head off the inevitable next, potentially even deadlier pandemic, that’s exactly what we must learn to do. 

It would be wise to heed the World Health Organization’s estimate that half of ALL the world’s deaths from infectious diseases could be eliminated –— ELIMINATED — with universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation. This would require expenditures of approximately $150 billion more than the world is already contributing to this effort.  It’s not hard to imagine that any place lacking basic sanitation only exacerbates the spread of fecal contaminants, which is one of the vehicles of contagion for Covid19. And meeting other fundamental human needs like basic education, primary health care and adequate nutrition has the potential to prevent most of the world’s other infectious diseases. 

An argument might be made that, because most of us in the U.S. have access to clean water and sanitation, we have no reason for concern. Okay. But remember that it is the lowest paid and poorest people in the world that are growing, harvesting, shipping and preparing much of the food we eat. There is no longer any basis for denying our global interconnections. It is not arguable. It is a fact. Preventing illness in one country or on one continent protects all the others. Allowing one part of the world to suffer filth and illness puts everyone at risk.

But prevention obviously isn’t enough. Viruses mutate. And Corona-type viruses are RNA based, meaning they mutate even more. Already there are various Covid19 strains that could eventually hamper vaccine development. 

Viruses can also exchange gene segments (viral sex if you will). It’s believed that the so-called 1918 “Spanish Flu” actually originated on a Kansas farm where a pig virus and bird virus swapped gene segments. One unconfirmed report suggested Covid19 was a combination of a snake and bat virus.  Viruses are also human engineered intentionally for pandemic preparedness and bioweapons research and defense. As the former WHO D.C. office Director Nelle Temple Brown once said “Things change! Can we?”  

Mutating pathogens are just one of six other key factors that must be considered in any comprehensive approach to preventing future pandemics and improving response capacity to them.

1. Travel and Trade.  (I don’t understand that first sentence, and the second one seems to get right to the point.) Unregulated trade and travel give pathogens an advantage of easily moving from areas of higher infection rates in poor nations by healthy vacationers, business people, or troops heading home.  Wealthy travelers visiting areas with impoverished and malnourished people who lack basic health service happens millions of times a week. On the other hand, restricted trade and travel can hurt local low wage economies by creating shortages of vital needs and make these more expensive for poor people to acquire. 

2. Poverty (lack of clean water, sanitation, basic education, primary health care service, and adequate nutrition). Although poverty and its accompanying deprivation of basic needs are crucial contributors to the spread of disease (and unrest), policies that would mitigate these conditions are unlikely to be enacted without unprecedented political will. 

3. Environmental factors: Global warming increases spread of mosquitoes and other critters that spread disease.  Extinction of species eliminates valuable natural genetic resources for advancing vaccine and antibiotic development.  Human encroachment into remote areas exposes humans to previously encountered pathogens.  Increased chemical pollutants can increase viral and bacterial mutations. All of these conditions are likely to increase without political will. 

4. Reliance on technology: Mass production of foods and medicines can amplify human errors and increase systemic vulnerabilities to cyber or conventional disruptions, which are likely to increase. Invasive medical procedures increase use of antibiotics and thus antibiotic-resistant strains. With increases in aging populations, injuries, elective surgeries, wars, and human error due to lack of education, training, and mental health services the increasing loss of our antibiotic arsenal will cause the deaths of millions of people a year. 

5. War, genocide, and ethic cleaning; Population displacement means breakdown of health systems and movement of malnourished and diseased populations.  War related injuries means increased use of antibiotics, which also weakens our antibiotic arsenal and can be linked to the development of bioweapons. Not coincidentally, all these potential disasters are likely to increase if the underlying driving forces of poverty and human rights violations are not addressed. 

6. Government dysfunction. Government’s lack of political will to invest in prevention factors on multiple levels.  Without large-scale, global rejection of nationalistic short-sighted political interests and the simultaneous recognition of international connection, governments will continue to underfund and even cut funding for vital global prevention programs. And, be more resistant to cooperative initiatives that could lower the risk of new infectious diseases, pathogen mutations, and rapid use of vital resources when they arise. 

Government’s institutional reliance on independent agencies to deal with interdependent problems that require comprehensive solutions is rarely helpful. Government’s continued reliance on unenforceable global norms also stymies comprehensive global solutions. Government failure to address corruption that drains essential financial resources away from productive domestic or global public health services. 

Government secrecy and its repression of public communications, movement, innovations and individual economic initiatives also limit local capacity for addressing public health threats.  

Freedom vs Security.  Or maximizing freedom and security. Libertarians frequently make the argument that we should have the right to fail or succeed.  But with infectious diseases individual freedoms can carry a lethal or debilitating burden on the rest of us whenever an individual act irresponsibly.  This should be self-evident even beyond humanity's greatest threat - infectious diseases.  Use of drugs, careless driving or gun ownership can harm others even when no infectious diseases are involved. During this pandemic one would be ill advised to end up in a hospital for any reason. 

Irresponsible actions primarily occur when we believe that we are independent from one another.  As individuals or nations.  Such a belief tends to limit concerns for the impact on others.  This thinking ultimately encourages irresponsible actions on multiple levels. Depending on the situation, such action can lead to unexpected lethal or catastrophic consequences.   

Ultimately, as sovereign individuals we are all free to do whatever we want. But we will never be free of the consequences. Corporations or U.S. states are free to develop their own tests or vaccines in response to Covid19.  They might come up with one that works perfectly. But the rest of us will pay the consequences for unanticipated, unnoticed, unrecorded, or unreported failures.   U.S. cities and states can enact any quarantine laws or regulations their legislature passes.  Individuals will choose to obey or ignore them depending on their beliefs and level of empathy for others. Some will pay the ultimate price of those laws being ignored.   

What’s missing is a responsible comprehensive system for best reducing or eliminating the creation, mutation and/or spread of infectious diseases.  The world has had one since 2015.  It’s the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  And they address each of the seven public health determinants listed above.  This plan offers the most comprehensive pandemic prevention insurance as well as the most effective response capacity for any outbreak that we could not prevent. 

In addition, achieving these goals by the year 2030 would also aid in the prevention or reduced threat of other catastrophic threats like global warming, war, genocide and terrorism.  And enable humanity to better deal with these and other threats that can never be prevented. 

There are two irreversibly connected factors now missing at this critical point in time. Both are needed to enable humanity to move urgently forward on the SDGs.  One is funding.  The other is a lack of political will to get it.

Governments are deep and dangerously in debt.  And it is their limited government money (our tax dollars) that has resulted in a non-zero-sum game that forces individuals, organizations, states and even government agencies to all compete against one another for a limited amount of resources. The same competition applies for limited private funds, media attention, and access to policy makers. 

Breaking that money game would require a new and enormous amount of money that would be potentially available for the movement capable of mobilizing the greatest clout.    Incredibly, a different and monstrous source of funding does exist.  And most of it should have been going to basic human health and environmental needs all along. 

Watch the 2019 Meryl Streep movie that she produced and starred in titled “Laundromat”.  It’s about money laundering. A 2017 Washington Post “myth” buster column referred to a 2014 study that estimated there’s at least $32 trillion stashed in offshore accounts put there by kleptocrats, oligarchs, drug cartels, violent extremist groups and wealthy capitalists avoiding taxes.  

One piece of US legislation aimed at freezing and then seizing most of this illicit money could fund the SDGs could motivate the environmental movement, peace movement, and economic/social Justice movement to come together into an unstoppable “Movement of Movements” (MoM).  This is what Naomi Klein called for at the 2014 Climate march when she insisted that event was not just about global warming. With tens of trillion dollars on the table thousands of organizations within each movement could finally come together for an unstoppable, common, comprehensive, just and sustainable agenda.  I don’t think it’s too optimistic to believe other national grassroots movements would join in.   

If Covid19 doesn’t make this MoM come together for all mothers around the world, mother nature, and our mother planet, perhaps our species isn’t worth saving. 

Who in their right mind would be against maximizing humanities freedom and security sustainably for future generations?   Laws helped create offshore accounts and governments virtually ignore them. And we the people ignored the governments. The corruption in our global economic system is not a glitch. It has been a cog in the system's wheel of inequality.

“We the people” can change this.  But we must exercise our God-given sovereignty to engineer a future where the protection of human rights is supreme to the freedom of governments and corporations to do as they please.  There will be no world government anytime soon.  But it is possible to sustainably and responsibly maximize our most cherished freedoms, vital security, and perpetual prosperity.  Its no secret that there are also extraordinary resources devoted to non-useful, even destructive measures that could also be tapped once the fear that too many people rationally experience disappears.  It would be a real ‘peace and security’ dividend. 

We U.S. citizens can mobilize in the context of keeping the pledge we have all given (all elected officials, sports fans and military service members) hundreds of times, before our flag.  We pledged “liberty and justice for all.”

Instead of fighting each other for paltry federal and state budget scraps we can come together to defeat Covid19 and prevent the evolution of other pathogens, unprecedented weaponry, or more environmental insults.  Each threatening our freedoms and our security. 

If not now, when? If not this, what? If not us, who? Our children? 

We can’t wait. Time is not on our side. God might be. But the only thing that moves faster than the genes of viruses across borders are the memes we can share when merging our hearts and minds using our cyber domain.  

This World Health Day, April 7^th, host, organize or participate in a webcast event to make these key points and begin organizing for the mother of all campaigns.  What else are you going to do while physical distancing?

The world is one. We must become one voice. Or prepare for more consequences. 

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin” William Shakespeare

(anticipating on Covid-19?)

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." - Chief Seattle, Duwamish (1780-1866) 

"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. Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p.250.

 “All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Africans speak of ubuntu (humanity), often translated as “I am because we are.”