RANDOM THOUGHTS 16/07/20

This collection of random thoughts is going to be a bit depressing, so if you don't want to feel blue than stop reading now.

Is the covid virus the end of the world?

Most films and books depict the ending of the world happening quickly. Nuclear holocaust, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, or more close to home now, an airborne virus that spreads rapidly across the globe, moving at a speed so fast that we have no chance to counter it. Oh, I forgot about the meteor hitting us.

However, could the end of the world be this covid virus? Instead of the end of our existence being speedy and quick, could we be, right now, in the midst of a slow, protracted extinction.

It is not the virus itself that may destroy us but it is the catalyst that will start the beginning of the end.

Lets just stop and think about it. I live in Australia, so I will talk about it first. Here in Australia we coped with the virus spread incredibly well. We locked down, the government initiated stimulus and job keeping packages. Sure the economy was going to take an enormous hit and many people lost their jobs, and this alone is tragic, and I do not want to come across as flippant. But as a whole, and compared to other countries in the world, we came out pretty much unscathed.

However all it takes is one person to spread the virus and now after a light at the end of the darkness seemed visible, cases started rising again in Victoria. In a nutshell, without a vaccine, the only way to stop this virus is to contain it and that means locking down areas where is appears, effectively containing that outbreak before it can spread. But remember it only takes one person to spread it, can we keep locking and shutting down areas indefinitely.

Now think about this on a global scale, adding in third world countries with transient populations. What about a continent such as Africa. How is it possible to contain a virus like covid, where there are so many countries without the means to effectively lock down areas. Countries without the manpower to control multiple borders, and again it only takes one person. How about countries with large homeless populations. How do you lock down such populations without resorting to terrible draconian measures?

Anyway, I said that covid would just be the catalyst. What is happening in Australia is that people are losing their jobs, this leads to people losing their houses, this leads to recession and eventual depression. Once there, people who need to feed their families turn to crime, taxing an already overburdened police force. The army can be called in to install martial law, but they are no longer getting paid and they have families to feed as well.

Now again think about this happening on a global scale. Today's world is all linked together. The planet is like one giant global village with one global economy. So if we think of the world as one big system, if a vaccine is not found, then the system is headed for entropy.

Now these are just my random thoughts for the day and I have always been told I have an overactive imagination. I have no idea how the countries of Africa are handling the virus. I am not being negative, just hoping that we find a vaccine.