While there are no new community transmitted cases in New Zealand where I live, having family in Europe (Denmark and France mainly) as well as in the US and Japan is not good on the nerves. It is disheartening to see the numbers creep up again overseas (read: in the rest of the world, from an NZ perspective) as activity is ramping up again as if the economy is somehow going to save us.
From a simple academic perspective, this is turning into a textbook example of how the trinity of social, economic and environmental wellbeing works: We are under enormous environmental pressure at the moment, from the COVID pandemic impact. Dealing exclusively with that will have strong impact on social and economic wellbeing, as the lockdown outcome has shown. However, trying to save or bring relief to the economy only allows the environmental disaster to accelerate (as July's numbers are showing) and that will drag everything else down with with it. Focus need to be on where the problem is, which is an environmental stress at the moment.
It is indeed an inconvenient truth that the environmental pressure on our fragile civilisation is a lot more important than we have allowed ourselves to think it could be. Solutions will be radical, but the impact of them can be spread out and mitigated if we take continuous, gradual steps toward containing and eliminating the virus.
S
From a simple academic perspective, this is turning into a textbook example of how the trinity of social, economic and environmental wellbeing works: We are under enormous environmental pressure at the moment, from the COVID pandemic impact. Dealing exclusively with that will have strong impact on social and economic wellbeing, as the lockdown outcome has shown. However, trying to save or bring relief to the economy only allows the environmental disaster to accelerate (as July's numbers are showing) and that will drag everything else down with with it. Focus need to be on where the problem is, which is an environmental stress at the moment.
It is indeed an inconvenient truth that the environmental pressure on our fragile civilisation is a lot more important than we have allowed ourselves to think it could be. Solutions will be radical, but the impact of them can be spread out and mitigated if we take continuous, gradual steps toward containing and eliminating the virus.
S