LETTER

Reply on predicting the future in a pandemic 

If we believe R. Butros’ letter,  “Everyone is predicting the future,” then maybe, just maybe, we, everyone, will predict that this time, A Change Is Gonna Come.  Modesty? I do have some. I know that making predictions is a fool’s errand, so let me give it a try.

Comparisons of today’s COVID-19 world to the time of WWI and the Middle Ages isn’t ideal. Evidence supports that the 1300’s “Black Plague” was caused by single-celled bacterium (Yersinia pestis). In four years rats and fleas bit their way through Eurasia and North Africa killing an estimated 75 to 200 million. Probably because most of this territory was basically an unhealthy mess. Some theorized the “Spanish Flu” pandemic began in Asia, but there is evidence that pandemic arose in the USA in March, 1918. Whatever the truth, we must remember that the virus we see today is a different virus that has evolved continually. This link to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is a comprehensive study of 1918 pandemic. I imagine they are hard at work on COVID-19 :  www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/

Economically? Multinational corporations may be the only survivors! Your corner store will be owned by Coca Cola or Monsanto or Canadian Tire!  I don’t think that stranglehold on commerce will ever be loosened. So what else can’t we change? The survival instinct, the drive to claw our way to the top, the top of whatever it is we want to be on top of. That will never change. So what can we change? There are 193 countries on Earth today, and all are looking forward, predicting, striving -- for what? 

Can we find it in our separate lives to predict a future where we can remove or revise the 5 vetoes (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) from handcuffing the United Nations and, instead, make it a force for world unity? A unity where Multinationals will work with like-minded nations and bring prosperity through environmental protection and clean-power generation, economic fairness, health care for all, ethical treatment of all. I suppose I could make this wish list longer, but I would be a fool.

Ron Temchuk 

Aylmer