Military wars are rare; just like pandemics. Nevertheless, each Ministry of Defence has access to war reserve stocks. A nation cannot defend itself without the immediate availability of military supplies (eg, bullets, rifles, tanks). It’s actually remarkable that a Ministry of Health does not have pandemic medical reserve capacity (eg, hospitals).
Recently, I read a counter-argument that personnel at pandemic medical reserve capacity would be idle. Clearly, that person never saw war reserve stocks. Apart from safeguarding, there is no personnel at such locations. Obviously, there must be regular readiness training exercises.
The need for pandemic medical reserve capacity is increasing because the frequency of pandemics is increasing. This increase in pandemic frequency is clear from the List of epidemics in Wiki. Sort column “Death toll (estimate)” from high to low. The 1st line (ie, 1877-1977) is misleading as smallpox dates back “to the 3rd century BCE in Egyptian mummies”.
The main reasons for an (expected and historical) increase in pandemics are basic and simple:
– the growth in global population (eg, my 2017 blog, Wiki);
– the growth in international trade and travel (eg, globalism);
– the growth in megacities and urbanisation (my blogs on urbanisation);
Also see my blogs of May 1 and June 30 on the historical increase in pandemics.
Unfortunately, people (eg, Bill Gates in 2014, Li Wenliang) and/or organisations (eg, WEForum) that have been warning for an increase in pandemics have been vilified by local authorities and/or conspirationists. Another example of the “infinity of human stupidity“.
Another argument in favour of establishing epidemic or pandemic medical reserve capacity is the protection of our regular healthcare capacity. A recent CDC study claims that “an estimated 41% of U.S. adults had delayed or avoided medical care including urgent or emergency care (12%) and routine care (32%).” Some argue that this will cause more deaths than Covid-19.
A final argument is the ginormous cost of Covid-19. Pandemic medical reserve capacity might be (much) cheaper than spending hundreds of billions of Euros per country – or trillions of US $ – to cope with the (economic) fall-out of Covid-19.
Love Epidemic (1975) by The Trammps
artists, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
There won’t be no need for medication, no, no, no
‘Cause there won’t be no disease or contamination
Ooh, all we need is your participation, yeah, people
Then we all can reunite this nation, oh
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
0 Comments