Well here we are again.
We were all little once and we all had piggy banks, too. For those of us Jewish boys and girls that were unable to have pigs in the house due to religion, we used tootsie roll cartons. Regardless, I remember when I would come home and dump my change into the banks. Of course, when you're little, you run all over the house looking for loose change to put in the bank - not just your own money.
Then, when its heavy enough, you tell mom that you're going to count all of the money that you had collected. And mom knew where all that money came from - especially when you're seven and you have over twenty dollars after just an hour.
After we're all done counting our money - and before mom takes it to the bank - we are told right away to wash our hands because we don't know where the money has been.
So here's my thinking: has globalization made us more prone to illness? According to Andrew Marshall of Reuters - Yes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/has-globalisation-made-us-more-catastropheprone-1674848.html
Mr. Marshall works with the concept of what globalization has done to world traveling and how the global economy is so entwined with everything else that its considered capable of withholding the effects or small ripples. But in actuality its a stand together or fall together system.
With airplanes flying out of every region of the world every minute it takes only hours or a day to spread a disease from one corner of the world to the next. In the past, it would have taken diseases weeks, months or even years to get across the globe.
I caught word of the Swine Flu a few days ago and watched as there were reports of it all across the globe. First was Mexico, then a few border states in the United States, then a school in NYC. Hours later it was popping up in Europe. This morning, I read that there was a suspected case in Israel - that's not kosher.
Perhaps it is true - globalization is a double edged sword and we are most definitely feeling the blade.
So where does this put Obama?
Rather, what can a President really do?
Diseases are the biggest enemy to the United States. Bigger then terrorists, rogue states, and pirates combined. Why? Because for all of our successes in mankind's history, we can't cure the common cold - let alone a rogue flu.
Rhetoric alone is not going to help President Obama. The government is going to have to fund drastic research into the CDC and other disease prevention institutions. I'm not a fan of big government, but its not like we're bailing out anything and placing it under government control.
If that doesn't work, President Obama could always follow in the footsteps of Bush-43: With a new type of enemy comes a new type of war.
"The War on Terror-ble Diseases"
4 comments:
So much of this read constituted a face palm, but in a good way.
Regardless, I know your feelings on big government, but a lot of us feel like government should be able to expand to health, and especially disease control. The World Health Organization, which is a branch of the UN, has had great success in disease reduction around the globe. And if governments and organizations such as can collaborate so effectively, why shouldn't they? They influence better world health, and therefore, security.
But keep washing your hands after you collect your change and bills. Seriously.
Love your ending! I don't know if I agree with the statement that Globalism is making us more prone to illness. The bubonic plaque wiped out a third of Europe before means of transportation was swift. I think that globalization has its problems in other ares such as Mc Donald's taking over the world, but this notion that illnesses can travel faster thus making us more susceptible to illness is something that I don't believe. I do however feel that the President should make every effort to prevent the spreading of the Swine Flu and make education about it very accessible. This is a challenge for Obama because how can he prevent something he cannot see? The only thing the President can do is work and give better funding to CDC and other disease prevention institutions.
I think that although it is important to stay clean and to wash your hands, I also believe globalization has taken it too far. Don't you think we have become almost too clean? There's now a cleaner for everything we touch. And by washing our hands fifty times a day, using sanitizers, and soaps, and sprays what we're actually doing is lowering our immune systems not raising them. Bacteria can be helpful and everyone has some in their body whether they like it or not. Globalization therefore has made us more aware of these illnesses we think we're going to catch, making us more prone to wash everything we own every second of the day, destroying healthy bacteria, lowering our immune systems, which actually are making us more susceptible to the diseases in which we were trying to avoid.
Reducing the transportation of diseases is a very difficult task to overcome. Diseases unlike other potential problems, is a biological persistence of nature. Organisms’ evolve to any situation given the right amount of time. Like you stated, we cannot cure the common cold, because it changes before becoming common. We do have the technology to reduce such harmful blooms of bacteria and viral infections but it takes time and money, but it is something that can be done.
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