I learned a new word recently while reading an Ian Banks sci-fi novel. Peregrinations. Realized that we recently did a yoga workout with a guy from a boat named Peregrine. Now I know what the story of that boat name is. Perigrinations refers to travels, or at least that’s what I recall from the dictionary built into my Kindle.
We’ve been thinking about how the COVID-19 pandemic is being managed by various countries and even states. At the end of the day, the crisis management model seemingly adopted by the UK, where the effort is to achieve “herd immunity” in a controlled rate that so that the sickest folks won’t overwhelm the healthcare system, that model is likely the only one that will work in today’s world of international supply chains and travel.
The rate of infection can be controlled somewhat by self-isolation requirements, but as we understand it lots of infected folks never exhibit symptoms. Without a cheap, reliable and “available everywhere” testing method in which there can be 100% compliance, plenty of infected folks will slip through the cracks.
Here in French Polynesia the effort has initially been to stop all international travel, stop all non-critical internal movement, and require households to self-isolate. This does seem to have slowed the rate of infection, as there something like 42 identified cases now, almost all of them on Tahiti, but that number obviously under-represents the true number of infected individuals. Still, the medical system has apparently managed to deal with the workload so far. Perhaps herd immunity will be achieved here at a much slower rate. Maybe a long enough, properly observed self-isolation period would actually stop the spread of COVID-19 and effectively eliminate it as a French Polynesian health issue.
That is, or course, until someone leaves and returns, or someone new arrives, inadvertently bringing the virus and re-introducing it to the population. Ships bring pretty much everything to this country. Airlines move businessmen, family members, government officials and tourists back and forth. Regardless of your philosophy or political stripes, international economic activity is the only way any country stays afloat. Heck, even those silly buggers in North Korea would starve without it.
A large part of the economy in French Polynesia is international tourism. Right now France seems able to prop the local economy up and the EU is perhaps kicking in, but ultimately commerce has to resume and money has to change hands so folks can buy groceries. Somebody has to pay to get ships loaded with goods, and someone has to get paid to create the goods to be loaded.
In the US much of the romaine lettuce comes from Yuma, Arizona, but vast quantities of other vegetables, fruit, fish and meat come from international sources such as Mexico. Our competition based, capitalist economy has not found it necessary (so far) to declare all agricultural food products as strategic resources and capabilities where we must be 100% self-sufficient. Heck, even department of defense equipment includes lots of international content, that’s how we can sell those weapons systems all over the world.
We can slow down the spread, but until a vaccine is developed, until a cheap and reliable test is developed, or until everyone has either had and survived coronavirus (or died), then COVID-19 will continue to plague us. Ultimately the anti-vaxxer idiots may be the final vector.
We don’t have the original “Omega Man” movie starring Charleton Heston with us, so to get up to speed on world pandemics I recently watched “I Am Legend” starring Will Smith, a remake of Omega Man. Stas’ said we should have “Pandemic”, based on a World Health Organization gameplay that acknowledges our totally connected world. Maybe that’ll be tonight’s educational video. I sure hope nobody has to kill their own dog. Wups, spoiler alert!
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