thoughts, musings and occasional rants
Governments are still responding to the immediate crisis. It’s up to us to look ahead, make plans, and start putting together a better solution for COVID-19 long-haulers… and, while we’re at it, for all the other chronically ill people in a similar pickle.
Any country that does not wrestle this novel coronavirus down to low prevalence is making its population a viral reservoir. By doing so, each such country endangers the entire world. It may spawn a mutation that is even worse than what we face now, more lethal or more disabling.
Do this protesting with the knowledge that when enough people do it—peacefully, persistently, insistently, unrelentingly—change happens. This is the way The People can push a nation (the USA or another) to become better than its authorities want it to be.
Space people volunteered a lot in all sorts of ways. Volunteering in any type of charity that did good works. In my case, organizing for societal change. That’s what we are all witnessing on the news since the USA’s Memorial Day. It is the best and most essential work of citizens in a society that hopes to grow more balanced and mature.
SpaceApps is an international hackathon to find ways to use NASA’s freely available data to tackle real-world issues. It’s been happening since 2012. Due to COVID-19, this year it’s happening in cyberspace 30-31 May and the target is the pandemic.
Today is the first time a commercial company, Space-X, is launching a rocket to carry crew into orbit. That’s tremendously important. If you have heard one of my talks about working in the American space program, you know why. If you are only listening to something like this morning’s BBC Radio 4 coverage, pundits are missing the main point.
We don’t have to look a century back to see other episodes where people needed to radically modify their behavior to fend off a rampaging disease. In deciding how to step into a future of fending off COVID-19 while we have no effective vaccine or treatment for it, remember that you may not need to invent all your coping mechanisms. You may be able to borrow some from the past. Your parents or grandparents may already know some of the answers you need.
Countries that provide a reservoir for the virus cannot expect airbridges with countries that don’t. And for countries as well as for people, going it alone is a lot harder than going together with friends and allies.
The pandemic won’t be over when it’s over. Some people who survive it suffer ongoing illness and occasional flare-ups months later. Like polio, COVID-19 will leave us with friends, family and colleagues who can’t do quite what they did before.
You know better than to go out and feed the economy simply because authorities want you to. Do what you can to be safe. It’s your life, not theirs.