The pandemic changed the way we view external threats

We have become nonchalant about viruses for too long.

The war on viruses was declared over in 1969 according to one quote: “it is time to close the book on infectious diseases and declare the war against pestilence won.” We had defeated the invisible killers. Now the focus should be on chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

Guess what? Viruses are not some distant threat. They are back with a vengeance.

image: Los Angles Times

The above quote was wrongly attributed to U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart. No one is sure just where the quote came from but as we let our guard down, a seemingly ordinary virus punished the world with the COVID pandemic.

How blithely we forgot the pandemic of 1918 when the microscopic killer circled the entire globe in four months and claimed the lives of more than 21 million people.

For the longest time, we didn’t take viruses (and other pathogens that cause infectious disease outbreaks) all that seriously.

Now a deadly assortment of viruses is raining on our parade of indifference.

For example, Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, rhinoviruses are taking their toll writes medical reporter Andre Picard (Globe and Mail, December 27, 2022)

And while HIV/AIDS has been quietly forgotten, it’s still with us. Polio, which was on the verge of eradication, has popped up in New York. Ebola reared its ugly head anew in Uganda. Monkeypox is spreading in strange new ways. Measles and other vaccine-preventable illnesses are making a comeback.

We may want to forget COIVD-19 but the coronavirus has not forgotten us. We long for “prepandemic” normalcy, but 2022 was actually the deadliest year yet for COVID-19.  In 2022, Canada surpassed 17,000 deaths, more than the 14,642 deaths we recorded in 2020 or the 16,489 in 2021.

We still don’t know if SARSCoV-2 will mutate further. A fifth wave of Omicron is just beginning.

One misconception is that exposure to COVID-19 may actually provide a benefit of immunity. Antivaxxers hope exposure will protect them against further infection.  Now it’s becoming evident that the opposite is true.

COVID-19 infections cause “immune dysregulation” in which the body either underreacts to foreign invaders, causing infections to spread quickly, or it overreacts to foreign invaders.

Even at the best of times, we know that viruses mess with the immune system, making it easier for secondary infections to strike. Pathogens interact with each other in strange ways.

We had become nonchalant about coronaviruses. Ordinarily, they only cause colds. That COVID-19 could kill 6.7 million globally was unexpected.

The pandemic changed the way we interact with the world in ways that only events such as the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon did on September 11, 2001.

The attacks on 9/11 spawned conspiracy theories and denial in a way that the pandemic has.

In addition to strict boarding procedures on planes put in place by 9/11, there is the additional threat of viral invaders while flying.

The pandemic has shifted our view of foreign threats. Before 9/11, attacks on North America were incomprehensible.

With COVID-19, the threat is closer that we imagined.

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The glow has gone off Non Fungible Tokens

During the pandemic, a particular fever called Non Fungible Tokens gripped the crypto world.

NFTs raised the level of abstract art to the ultimate level of abstraction. Using the same technology as cryptocurrencies, art could be purchased that existed in an ethereal digital form only.

image: SiouxieEMart NFT – Pulp fiction Girl

NFT art held both promise and hype. Finally, artists could make a living selling their art by bypassing the middlemen -the galleries and agents who take a cut of sales. Now artists could market their work directly to buyers.

NFTs promised could solve another problem: resale. Artists often sell their work to art speculators for very little. This is especially true for Indigenous artists who work in remote, sometimes Arctic, locations. Speculators sell the art for many times more than what they paid. The price can escalate with each sale, leaving the artist with a fraction of the eventual sales. NFT contracts could include a clause that requires a percentage of the resale price go to the artist.

I didn’t realize that my art was non-fungible two years ago but that was only because I didn’t know what the word “fungible” meant.

Fungible things can be exchanged for something else of the same kind: they are equivalent. A twenty dollar bill is fungible because it can be exchanged for a ten and two fives. A house is not fungible because you can’t exchange it for a garage and two sheds. They are not equivalent.

My art is non-fungible. One of my acrylic paintings can’t be exchanged for a charcoal sketch and two plastic-fork mobiles.

However, my non-fungible art is not in a digital form whose ownership is established by the cryptocurrency ledger called blockchain -it’s not a token. You can hang my art on the wall.

Scott Martin, an artist from Hamilton, Ontario, did very well selling NFTs. After studying art at college, he sold used car commercials. . In 2020, a friend encouraged him to sell his work as NFTs. His first attempt netted a few thousand dollars. “The more exciting part was just knowing somebody would want to pay for my work without actually being able to hold it,” he says.

Then he and partners released 10,000 drawings under the name Doodles. The series sold out within minutes. Since then, more than US$520-million worth of Doodles have traded hands, making it one of the most popular NFT collections in the world.

Not everyone thinks NFTs are a serious investment. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates alluded to the “greater fool” theory to describe NFTs which says that investors can make money on the most worthless asset so long as someone else is gullible enough to buy it at a higher price.

With the pandemic fever waning, investments in phantom money and art are losing their appeal. In general, the value of NFTs has been slashed in half.

The glow has gone off of NFTs. Investors are looking for safe havens, and it’s hard to think of a riskier asset than a JPG. “The bubble has burst, or still has to burst,” says Pedro Herrera, head of research at DappRadar. “Ninety to 95 per cent of the projects that we currently see in the market, in two years, will be worth close to zero.”

The new threat to health care is not privatization, it’s viral

The COVID pandemic has gone viral. I don’t mean the Delta variant. I mean the mania created by antivaxxers who have whipped up opposition to panic levels.

Potesters in front of Kamloops hospital image: CFJC Today

Antivaxxers are angry over their perceived loss of rights. At a Trudeau rally in Bolton, Ontario on Aug 27, 2021, dozens of protesters, some holding babies, shouted expletives, waved middle fingers, and made references to Nazis over megaphones. The rally was cancelled over safety concerns.

The viral nature of antivaxxers is not even about the disease –it’s about their purported rights and freedoms. Their rights are being infringed, they claim. They have the constitutional right to infect others with a potentially deadly disease because they selfishly refuse to be vaccinated.  

That’s the nature of viral crazes –they’re irrational.

Antivaxxers are mad as hell at the B.C. government for introducing vaccine cards. Some business owners have threatened not to screen customers for the card. But if they thought about it, they’d realize that customers are less likely to enter their premises if their health is at risk.

To be clear, I’m not saying that those who haven’t yet been vaccinated are antivaxxers. Most of the unvaccinated are not against the jab, they just haven’t found the time or motivation. Motivation was provided with the announcement of vaccine cards and vaccination clinics are suddenly busy.

In an attempt to invent a reason to call an election, Prime Minister Trudeau is trying scare voters into believing that the Conservatives will put an end to our cherished public health care system. He defended a tweet in his deputy prime minister that painted Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole as an advocate for private health care.

Twitter marked Trudeau’s retweet of the edited video of O’Toole as ‘Manipulated media.’

What O’Toole actually said was that that he wanted to find public-private synergies. Later, he said that he “100 per cent” supports the public and universal system and pointed to a promised $60 billion in health funding in his platform.

Nice try Prime Minister, but the immediate threat is not privatization but burnout of health care workers. Yes, privatization is a perennial threat but the urgent threat is the fatigue experienced by health care workers.

Nurses are suffering from burnout and frustration. They are tired of caring for COVID infected people who refuse to get vaccinated. Patients get sick from a preventable disease and then look for sympathetic treatment. Nurses are leaving Royal Inland Hospital at alarming rates.

However, the viral mania seems to have spread to some nurses as well. 

A group called “Canadian Frontline Nurses (CFN)” is advertising protests against vaccine mandates, which are slated to take place at Kelowna General Hospital, Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, and other cities across the country. The CFN website states their mission:

“To restore our freedoms and rights as Canadian citizens and reinstate the four ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice within nursing.”

A Royal Inland Hospital nurse told iNFOnews.ca that she is concerned about protests in front of the hospital.

Instead of investing reasons for an election, that is nothing but a power grab, Trudeau should address the immediate problems of our health care system.

The fungus among us: the next pandemic

I thought we were friends. You help me make beer, wine, bread and kombucha.

We help you spread your spores by clearing land for crops and housing. We warm the climate to make it comfortable for you to grow. You happily hitchhike around the world on goods and animals.

Every day, every person on the planet inhales at least 1,000 fungal spores.

Sure, you can be irritating at times with your fungal skin infections. You bug us with your athlete’s foot, jock itch, ringworm, and yeast infections.

But now you are turning deadly. What gives?

Up until now, doctors have considered Valley Fever an exotic “desert disease” confined to California, Arizona, the southern tip of Nevada, New Mexico and west Texas.

Now Valley Fever, caused by Coccidioides, is on the move. It regularly infects about 150,000 a year in the desert and it’s now moving north. With soil becoming drier due to climate change, Coccidioides spores are blowing in the wind and infecting people in Washington State (Scientific American, June, 2021).

While no statistics are available for Canada, Coccidioides has likely moved into B.C.’s southern desert interior.

When those spores are inhaled, they can migrate from the lungs into the bloodstream, and from there to the skull and spine. The lungs react by producing scar tissue that stiffen and block the lungs, reducing breathing capacity. Masses can form around organs and the membranes around the brain, causing death.

Because infections have been relatively rare until now, there are few antifungal treatments. Also, they are difficult to design because fungal and humans human cells are so similar. It’s challenging to create a drug that can kill them without killing us, too.

The yeast-like fungus, Candida auris, was virtually unknown until 2009. Since then, there have been outbreaks of infection in hospitals and long-term care facilities in Canada and around the world. Most infections occur in patients with weakened immune systems: those receiving chemotherapy or surgery and who are on large intravenous lines.

Former president of the Canadian Infectious Disease Society, Dr. John Conly, says that we have been ignoring the growing multidrug-resistance of C. Auris for decades.

“The ball was dropped for many years,” says Conly. He likens antimicrobial resistance to climate change as: “a slow-moving tsunami.”

The COVID pandemic brought on new opportunities for C. Auris. In the frantic interventions to save patients from the coronavirus –such as ventilators, immune-damping drugs, broad-spectrum antibiotics- patients are left vulnerable to the fungus.

In the chaos of the pandemic, few statistics of infection were kept. But a report from New Delhi found that two thirds of the patients who contracted C. Auris died after they were admitted to hospital with COVID.

Another so-called friend is revealing its malevolence.  On its good side, Aspergillus fumigatus serves as a clean-up crew. It encourages the decay of vegetation in the composting process.

One its evil side, Aspergillus causes of an opportunistic infection spawned when someone with a compromised immune system cannot sweep away its spores. In people who are already ill, the mortality rate of Aspergillus is near 100 percent.

Aspergillus can invade organs and the blood stream, including the brain. Professor Kieren Marr of Johns Hopkins Medical Center says:“This is bad. Aspergillus is more important in COVID right now than C. auris. Without a doubt.”

Fungi are woven into our lives, our environments and our bodies.  

Can’t we continue to be friends?

We are being tested by smoke, fire, heat and disease

As we emerge from the pandemic, Kamloopsians expect that summer, especially this summer, will be liberating.

image: Globe and Mail

After being cooped up all winter, carefully  cloistering ourselves and observing ceremonial cleansing, we look forward to being outside, basking in the glory of Kamloops’ legendary heat.

But this summer, the heat is oppressive. And like the pandemic, the smoke keeps us indoors. Now all we want to do is seek the refuge of an air conditioned shelter.

It all tests our resiliency and takes its toll on our psyche.

Instead of being rewarded for our good hygiene in fighting the pandemic, we are stuck inside as thick smoke from wildfires that blanket the city.

When you’re choking on smoke and your eyes are watering, it’s bad for your physical health to be outside. And it’s bad for your mental health to be inside.

We imagined that the “new normal” will be adjusting to a world in which most people are vaccinated and COVID-19 is just another bug in the cast of flu characters.

But our new normal will have to include hotter summers, wildfires and smoke. The areas burned will become even greater.

The area burned by wildfires in Canada has doubled since the early 1970s, says Dr. Mike Flannigan, research chair for fire science at Thompson Rivers University.

And it’s only going to get worse, says Flannigan, – it’s just a matter of how much worse. Modest predictive modelling suggests the area burned in Canada will double again by the end of the century; more aggressive modelling predicts an increase by 11 times.

We are getting familiar with the measurement of the smoke hazard –just how bad is it? The hazard is measured by the weight of smoke particles in a certain volume of air; specifically, the weight of PM2.5 particles in micrograms per cubic metre.

What makes the PM2.5 particles so potent is that they can affect every organ in the body, not just the lungs.

Sarah Henderson, scientific director in environmental health services at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, says that the particles are dangerous long before you can smell and taste the smoke. At levels of only 30 micrograms per cubic metre, adverse reactions begin:

“When it looks really bad, people think it is really bad,” she said. “But it becomes unhealthy long before it looks terrible. The immunological response ends up causing inflammation, and that inflammation is systemic.”

Concerned about the smoke hazard, I recently installed an air sensor, made by Purple Air, in my house. While the weekly average reading has been nine micrograms per cubic metre, which is safe, sometimes it peaks at over 50.

George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University, has studied people’s resiliency in the aftermath of hurricanes, terrorist attacks, life-threatening injuries and epidemics such as the 2003 SARS outbreak.

Bonanno’s research shows three common psychological responses to hardship. Two thirds of people are resilient and maintain relatively stable psychological and physical health. About 25 percent struggle temporarily with psychopathology such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder and then recover. And 10 percent suffer lasting psychological distress.

We are being tested on a number of fronts. Physical and mental illnesses are not a sign of weakness –they provide an occasion for everyone to rise to the challenge, to draw closer together and support those in need.

Languishing: the malaise of our pandemic times

Our journey through this pandemic is unprecedented in modern times.

image: NBC News

We won’t know what the exact effects of the pandemic will be until it’s over.

Meanwhile, psychologists suggest that if we can find words that describe how we feel now it helps us cope; words like “grief” and “languishing.”

I thought it might be helpful if I could find the expanded use of commons words during the last pandemic of 1918. But I couldn’t.

Instead, I did find some technical terms in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu epidemic. We know that fifty million people died globally in four waves during the pandemic. And, similar to this third wave of this COVID pandemic, it hit young people hard. Many died within three days of showing symptoms.

One diagnosis from the Spanish flu pandemic was “encephalitis lethargica.” It was characterized by excessive sleepiness, abnormal eye movements, fever, and movement disorders, although virtually no neurological sign or symptom could be found. The chronic phase was characterized by Parkinson-like signs that could last months, even a year, after the pandemic ended.

“Grief” is one of those words for which the meaning can be expanded to describe the way we now feel. One dictionary meaning is: “deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone’s death.” But more recently, the definition of grief has been expanded to mean “mourning the loss of normalcy.” Psychologist Adam Grant says that the expanded meaning of grief gives a sense of familiarity:

“[The expanded meaning of grief] gave us a familiar vocabulary to understand what had felt like an unfamiliar experience. Although we hadn’t faced a pandemic before, most of us had faced loss. It helped us crystallize lessons from our own past resilience — and gain confidence in our ability to face present adversity (New York Times, May 4).”

Languishing is another useful word. Dictionary meanings include: to be or become feeble, weak, as in Plants languish in the drought. Adam Grant expands the definition:

“It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

Languishing is the “blah” feeling we have during the pandemic.

I originally read Adam Grant’s column in the New York Times after my cousin sent me a link. She added: “I think these days I’m languishing. Seems I’m putting in time until we can travel and see people again. Melancholy isn’t the right word.”

Part of the danger is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of your drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; you’re indifferent to your indifference. When you can’t see your own suffering, you don’t seek help or even do much to help yourself.

If this pandemic is like the last, we will experience depression and anxiety disorders for years, even if we aren’t suffering from symptoms today.

Lessons learned from the pandemic about health care

When we pull together, we can quickly achieve results that have escaped us in the past.

image: Hartford Healthcare

Some liken to being at war but I prefer to compare the pandemic response to what happened when we created universal health care.

Governments have been reluctant to implement the universal coverage of drugs in the past, but in short order we have vaccines freely available for all Canadians.

It’s that easy. A universal pharmacare program could happen, too. All it takes is the will to carry it out.

Canada has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world with universal health care that doesn’t include prescription drugs.

Canada has been stuck in a time warp since the inception of health care. When Tommy Douglas envisioned a healthcare system in 1947, it included hospitals and then later, doctor’s services.

Other countries have moved on. New Zealand’s publicly funded system goes beyond hospital and physician care to include long-term care, mental health, physical therapy and prescription drugs.

While we like to boast of our healthcare system compared to our neighbours to the south, in reality ours is just good enough. Canada is stuck in “paradigm freeze” — good enough to prevent any major change or improvement.

The pandemic can shake us from our stupor and awaken us to the fact that a universal pharmacy program is cheaper for all, not just in the bargaining power of negotiating drug prices but in reduced healthcare costs resulting from a healthier population.

Another lesson learned was how rapid we can achieve, essentially, a basic universal wage. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was distributed virtually overnight.

CERB has been replaced with other programs but with the political will to make it happen, Canada could have a basic universal wage.

A reduction in poverty through a basic income could improve health. The connection is deep, say Drs. Nadine Caron and Danielle Martin:

“But, perhaps surprisingly, the experiment [CERB] that may have had the biggest impact on health during COVID-19 didn’t take place in the healthcare system at all.” (The Walrus, Jan/Feb, 2021)

The connection between finances and health is well studied. Between 1993 and 2014 in Ontario, for example, residents of the poorest areas were more than twice as likely to die from a preventable cause as those living in the wealthier neighbourhoods.

Another lesson learned was from the fewer diagnostics done during the pandemic.

On the negative side, cancelled tests meant that diseases went undetected. The B.C. Cancer agency estimates that 250 British Columbians unknowingly had silent cancers go undiagnosed as their screening mammograms, colonoscopies, and pap smears were cancelled in just the first six weeks of the pandemic.

On the positive side, many tests routinely done may be unnecessary. If all those tests are so important, why aren’t they done uniformly across Canada? Chris Simpson, a cardiologist and former president of the Canadian Medical Association, wonders:

“Why do patients in one region get these tests and procedures at higher rates than other regions?”

The simple answer may be that, like prescriptions, doctors like to order tests so as to be seen to be doing something towards patient care. All those tests may not be the best use of resources.

Canadians can be proud for pulling together during this crisis. Let’s not forget what we can accomplish.

The young have sacrificed much during the pandemic with little to show

Young Canadians have been blamed for being irresponsible during the pandemic for going to parties and bars. But there’s more hype than truth to these accusations. The deadly virus has been spread by people of all walks of life.

BLM demonstration Kamloops. Image: CFJC Today

Young people are sacrificing the opportunities of a lifetime. This is a time to build professional networks for future careers. Relationships have been delayed at a time that they are looking for lifetime partners. Families are being put off for better times.

As an older person, the sacrifices I make are minimal –stay home and watch Netflix. Sure, I miss going to shows, bars and restaurants but these can hardly be characterized as sacrifices compared to what young people endure.

Government response has been geared to protecting the assets of older people, particularly wealthy old people. When stocks crashed in the self-induced pandemic recession, central banks pumped money into markets to preserve share worth and property values.

Economic relief is geared toward protecting the wealth and income of the top 10 per cent in society -those with homes, accumulated wealth and a defined-benefit pension- not for young people.

Young people have been hard hit with job losses and increased exposure to the virus. They’re more likely to live in shared accommodation and work in jobs that require a high degree of face-to-face contact. They are more likely to rely on public transit. And when they work in office buildings, it’s in relatively cramped conditions.

But what is clear is that if governments are determined to “return to normal,” the bulk of new infections will likely occur among young people for the simple reason that they inevitably engage in more social interaction than older people.

Despite receiving an unfair share of the blame for spreading COVID-19, young people have received little credit for leading protests against injustice.

Many young people are deeply idealistic, calling for such things as democracy, racial equality, climate action, human rights and justice in policing.

In Kamloops last summer, young people organized a protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. They called it BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) to reflect the overall injustice of racism.

The Tiny House Warriors in Kamloops, led by Indigenous youth, have protested the building of the Trans Mountain pipeline on unceded Secwepemc Territory.

The Idle No More movement, founded in 2012 by Indigenous youth, was in reaction to the Harper government’s removal of protections for forests and waterways in Bill C-45.

“Let’s be brutally frank here,” says John Rapley, political economist at the University of Cambridge, “As a disproportionate number of elderly people died, young people might actually face improved economic prospects.”

Young people have the most to gain when this pandemic sweeps the globe. Older people are more likely to die from COVID-19, which could improve the economic prospects of the young; fewer people drawing from pension plans, more houses on the market which would drop the price.

Young people have borne, and continue to bear, the brunt of isolated social interactions. They lead movements against racism, brutality and colonialism with little appreciation for their efforts.

Shared delusions in Lee Creek and the USA

It’s amazing when two or more people share the same delusion. You have to wonder how that’s possible.

image: The Victor Voice

Look at what happened in Lee Creek. Police were called to the small community on Shuswap Lake where they found two men barricaded inside a house, firing guns at imaginary creatures. The men were relieved when the police arrived because they were surrounded by hundreds of wild animals. They told their detailed observations with police:

“They described in detail having seen cougars kill deer and moose in the front yard,” said Sgt. Barry Kennedy in a news release. “They reported seeing the cougars drag the dead deer and moose up into the tree canopy, where the dead animals were purportedly still hanging. They also believed there was a pile of dead bears in the backyard (CFJC Today, Nov. 25, 2020)”

Well, you might say, we all share a reality of the world we consider to be true. It’s the only way societies can function. Who’s to say what reality is true and anther delusional?

That’s the beauty of the scientific method: investigate and gather evidence.

Police found no piles of bears and concluded that the two men were suffering from a “health crisis.” Their shared reality was a delusion.

In the U.S., and Canada to a lesser extent, millions of people share the perception that the COIVD-19 pandemic is a political ploy. Jodi Doering, an emergency room nurse in South Dakota, told CNN of patients who refused to believe that they were dying of COVID-19. They preferred to believe that it was lung cancer or pneumonia because COVID-19 didn’t exist.

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred,” said Doering.

Why would someone die of COVID-19 believing that it doesn’t exist? Well, their president told them so. The Outgoing President (OGP) said that after the election over, the virus would simply disappear. You see, the pandemic is just an election ploy by the Democrats.

Where is the evidence to support that claim?

If the RCMP were called to the emergency room in South Dakota, they would be justified in concluding that the COVID-19 deniers were suffering from a “health crisis.”

It’s all part of parallel information machine. In one of the parallel tracks is the news covered by reporters whose job it is to dig up the facts and investigate claims. The alternative track to the news is the opposite; I’ll call it “swen,” news spelled backwards. What would be facts in the news is conjecture in the swen. What is an investigation in the news is a conspiracy in the swen.

Swen has a magical quality to it. You can bring truths into existence just by saying they are so.

Look at what happened when a supporter of QAnon tweeted that Wayfair Furniture was involved in a sex-trafficking ring involving children. Bingo. It was true. Believed by millions.  It was even circulating in Kamloops social media circles.

QAnon, itself, became swen after a mysterious one or more people said it was true.

What the QAnon believers of the Wayfair swen is a fiction within a fantasy. The fantasy is that QAnon is an underground network of Democrat pedophiles. The fiction is that Wayfair is selling children, not furniture.

Like parallel lines, these parallel realities will never meet. One of the “gifts” of the internet is that millions of swen believers live in a delusion totally foreign to news followers.

There aren’t enough RCMP to round them up.

COVID-19 is more costly to humanity than climate-change

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way I regard climate change. Don’t get me wrong: climate change is real and it’s man-made. But it not the “the greatest threat to humanity” that I once characterized it.

image: Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute

The greatest threats to humanity are the pandemics caused by our violation of the natural world of animals. As we recklessly tear nature apart, we reap the whirlwind of its viral bounty.

World leaders have exploited our fears of climate change. The World Health Organization famously called climate change the “greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.” Leaders of the richest nations gathered in Davos this January and declared that climate accounted for all the long-term biggest risks to the world.

Persistent scare stories have convinced us that the climatic end-of the-world is nigh. One survey of 28 countries shows that almost half of all people believe climate change will likely lead to the extinction of the human race.

The world’s poor don’t see it that way -they rank climate change quite differently. When the UN asked 10 million people, mostly those in the majority world who are poor, what they regarded as the world’s top priorities, they emphasized better education, health care, jobs, government and nutrition. Climate change ranked 16th out of 16 priorities – right after phone and internet access.

Bjorn Leonhard, President of the Copenhagen Consensus and author of False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, says:

“Global warming is a real challenge and a problem we need to tackle. But the alarmism makes it difficult for us to think smartly about climate solutions and it diverts our attention away from the many other important global issues (Globe and Mail, July 19, 2020).”

Sea level rise is very real problem but it’s often portrayed in apocalyptic terms. We are told by the UN climate change panel that 187 million people will be displaced. Bloomberg News declared that coastal cities such as Miami may “drown in 80 years.”

But that number assumes that we do nothing in the meantime. In fact, people don’t just sit around while the water laps at their feet. The same UN climate change panel shows that with adaptation, such as protection with dikes or seawalls, the number of people in the world who have to move by the end of the century is just 305,000. For comparison, four times that number of immigrants now live in B.C. according to the 2016 census. B.C. could accommodate all the world’s water refugees.

The economic effects of climate change are serious but not fatal. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the economic effect of climate change would reduce the average person’s income in the 2070s by 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent. The reduction means that we will “only” be 356 per cent richer today instead of 363 per cent richer without the impact of climate change. That’s a sombre finding but not as bad as the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic from which we may never fully recover.

The impact of climate change is real but it pales in the light of the economic impact of this global pandemic.