Skip to main content

History Has A Way Of Repeating Itself

Did you ever notice when some kind of disaster happens, it's almost immediately compared to something similar in the past? The financial collapse of 2008 was compared to the depression of the 1930s. This current pandemic is often compared to the Spanish flu from the early 1900s.

Is it that we don't learn from these things or that they get so far back we can't think of them as anything we should be worried about. Survivours of the German concentration camps, tell us we should never forget the evil men can do to each other if they fall under the spell of madmen like Hitler. We had numerous genocide outbreaks since then.

When this pandemic is sufficiently controlled, we will all start to feel better, celebrate for sure, and move on with our lives. But are we going to learn anything?

We could and should put practices and policies in place that anticipate and plan for another pandemic. We should be on a constant war footing against these bugs, because like it or not we will be. Compare it if you will, to The Cold War. If we can plan for every possibility of foreign and hostile attacks against us, we can do the same for germs of this nature.

There is so much of the infrastructure that has failed us. All of those beautiful highways sat empty for weeks on end because no one needed them.

Our medical community bent but did not break. The death toll for that to happen was too high. Then again, there are always casualties in War. Typically military leaders are still trying to figure out how to minimize losses while getting the desired outcome. We need to overhaul our healthcare system. Ours doesn't work for everyone, and it has to or what we are witnessing now will happen again.

We've realized something that, for many of us, was uncomfortable. We ask a lot of faceless, low paid, unappreciated people to risk their lives for us. The grocery store clerks and restockers who, if you went to a grocery store during the pandemic, were in an environment that was waiting for the next infectious person to walk in and possibly spread discomfort at best and death at the worst.

Of course, they aren't the only ones. The bus drivers, the drug store clerks, the delivery service people, the warehouse workers, the police officers, the firemen, the list goes on and on.

We did get a lot of work done from home. Although working without building comradeship might be sterile and not as satisfying. However, we know there are ways to incorporate online meetings and physical get together to fill that need.
We can not go back to the way things were. Our game plan for life got sucker-punched by something we can't even see.

There needs to be a reassessment of our values. We need to look at what works and make it happen. No matter what political party or wing of such parties comes up with a good idea, we have to consider it. If it doesn't work, we have to fix it or try something else, but we can't be pining away for the good old days. The good old days are over. The only thing left for us to rebuild for the brand new days.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ring The Bell

 It appears there is a tradition in the radiology department at Ascension Hospital that patients, upon completing their course of treatment, ring a bell. ( We know not for whom this bell tolls.) Ring the Bell with My Sweetheart Jeanne. Jeanne drove me to all but two of the appointments. Pam Frautchi took me to the other two. Today, after being zapped thirty-two times, I rang the bell. This begins a roughly one-month recovery period where the effects of the radiation abate and, I'm assured, a return to normalcy occurs. In my case, I anticipate more energy and greater awareness. Books, Books, & More Books I am simultaneously celebrating the end of the third year of volunteering for the All Saints Hunger Book Sale. Next week, we will wrap up the preparation for the sale and open our doors on August 3 for the public. I ran into this humourous but quite accurate cartoon on a T-Shirt that shows most of the volunteer's sentiments at this point. If you think the printed and bound p...

It's time again.

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...

Latest News From The City On The Inland Sea

 Many of us in Milwaukee have put away the black armbands recognizing our grief for the Brewer's early exit from the playoffs. The Packers are going through their season, letting Jordan Love grow into the vacancy left by the departure of Aaron Rodgers. The Milwaukee Bucks are daring anyone to try and take this year's championship away from them. Marquette, UWM, and the Badgers have an abundance of hope. Marquette, however, has the talent. My Treatments We are at a checkpoint. Along with my immunotherapy next Monday, I'm having a scan. It's felt that my body has shed enough radiation so we can get a look at the infected area and evaluate the progress. Watch this space. I am feeling well. I had little reaction to the second round of the Keytruda and don't anticipate any from the next injection. I went to Walgreens to get my Flu shot and my COVID booster. Remember when we used to go to the drugstore because they had a soda fountain. Wanderings Jeanne and I decided to g...