COVID-19 OUTBREAK IS COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL

By Vincent Lyn

Let’s backtrack a little and look back to January 2020. We all looked forward to a new decade, a year filled with optimism and highlighted by joy, financial reward, travel, sports, arts and entertainment. Instead it’s been just the opposite, sadness, anger, mental health, economic disaster, quarantined, and collective death and still there is no end in sight. With homeless people living at Macy’s, Domino’s Pizza paving the streets, a Walmart that became an internment camp for little kids separated from their parents. Welcome to daily life in modern day America

Would any of us at the beginning of this year have seen the catastrophe that was looming I doubt anyone would have? And even if you had an idea like myself that something awful was coming certainly not to this degree. It’s now like Mount Everest. A combination of malice, negligence, and stupidity led to this. The World’s worst Coronavirus outbreak, hitting the point of a chain reaction, now spreading uncontrolled.

We are all scurrying around like ants trying to make sense of it all. Many have lost their jobs and are now in financial ruin, many have lost their homes or been evicted from their apartments and now been made homeless. But if this is bad the tsunami that’s coming will be a tragedy that many are going to literally be ravaged by and succumb to. If the collective death of 160,000 men, women and children isn’t enough for you to take notice, then what will? Though not surprising it hasn’t hit home enough except if you’ve been immediately affected by it. Either from a loved one dying or you’ve gotten seriously ill from COVID-19. I believe we are now stuck with Coronavirus and it will be a part of our future. The question will be how will we live with it? Probably a million lives will be sacrificed before we can really get a handle on it, but if it doesn’t affect your little circle so what?

Americans have always been very selfish, and as long as I’m okay who gives shit about anyone else. I mean if you have a swath of people who refuse to wear a face mask to protect their health and moreover respect the health of others then what have we become? When the Titanic is sinking and America is sinking, it’s every man for him self. What a tragedy brought out by a President whose malice, indifference, negligence and stupidity has resulted in the World’s worst outbreak.

COVID-19 will become permanent. How long in the foreseeable future before we can get a handle on it? If we use a simple decay rate of “as long as it took the virus to spread,” then the foreseeable future is about nine months or so at least. That’s not to say severe lockdowns will have to last that long, but life can’t return to normal either. I predicted back in February that it would last until summer of 2021 and it looks very well like it will. I see two major issues moving forward. Currently the administration had 4 months to implement a plan for the schools and universities to open in 4 weeks from now safely. Is there a plan in place? As far as I know nothing that resembles safety for children or teachers. The government knowing full well the dangers that lurk once you send children back to school and there will be dead children its guaranteed. How disgusting that the government can be so downright diabolical in their lack of empathy. Parents are left with the decision to make the sacrifice of sending their children to a school setting that could ultimately lead to their death.

Possibly much worse is H1N1 influenza flu season begins. The exact timing and duration of flu seasons can vary, but influenza activity often begins to increase in October. Most of the time flu activity peaks between December and February although activity can last as late as May. With the combination of H1N1 and COVID-19 it could be the making of the ‘Perfect Storm’. This would be our second wave that could wreak global havoc the likes we’ve haven’t seen since the Spanish Flu pandemic. Everyone should be greatly concerned as I am about this looming threat.

I’ve been feeling these past couple of months that we are in for a real wake-up. You’re probably saying WTH else could go wrong? But history is a constant reminder that it can always get much worse and I feel what we are currently experiencing is just the tip of the iceberg. I wrote six months ago and warned friends and colleagues that this virus was going to change the face of our world and to prepare. Many listened who even as recently as this past week have been thanking me but there were some who thought I was being an alarmist and didn’t prepare. Many are still in denial believing it’s all a big hoax and conspiracy I wince in incredulity. We are in for a global change that will change the face of humanity forever. I know what some of you are thinking I’m being an alarmist yet again. But not to kick you in the head I’ve been right on from the very beginning as many will attest to. I only wish I wasn’t.

The end of civilization is now easy enough to see over the course of the next three decades. It’s made of climate change, mass extinction, ecological collapse, and the economic depressions, financial implosions, political upheavals, pandemics, plagues, floods, fires, and social breakdowns all those will ignite. COVID-19 is a foreshadowing, a taste of a dismal future, a warning, and a portrait, too. Life as we know it is falling apart. Life as we know it will continue to fall apart, for the rest of our lives.

Does it suck to live at the end of human civilization? Of course it does. Not just because life is wearying, boring, draining, or tense. But because you know it didn’t have to be like this. And yet it is. Maybe, then, it always did have to be like this. Maybe this is the only way. We have to fail so we can learn. I take consolation, I suppose, in the fact that the next civilization will be — will have to be — wiser, gentler, truer, better than us, It’s a shame, though, that the rest of our lives are going to, well… you know. Suck.

I was going to leave it on a real downer but that’s not in my spirit. So don’t despair but lift up your head and get busy. While we still have air in our lungs and blood surging through our veins there are still so many wonderful, incredible things we can accomplish. You can learn new things in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner the whole world opens up to you. You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Vincent Lyn

CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children

Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization

Economic & Social Council at United Nations

Middle East Correspondent at Wall Street News Agency

Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts