CONTACT:
- John Norris
- 617-680-3127
- John.Norris@Safely2Prosperity.com
- https://www.safely2prosperity.com
February 12, 2024 – (BOSTON)
As a former FDA COO and Harvard faculty member, and having served in the US military during the Vietnam War, I believe I must help prepare the US and our allied nations—and their critical enterprises— worldwide—to better survive the next pandemic, endemic, or local outbreak of a dangerous pathogen, whether it is nature-made or human-manufactured.
There is much confusion among the public and senior executives at government agencies and businesses, both for-profit and not-for-profit, about the continuing significant risks from infectious disease spread within their places of business and their employees’ homes.
Since the interest of the press and their viewers and readers was saturated by their over two-year almost daily coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic, they have stopped covering the continuing significant risks of pathogens, including COVID-19, the flu, and RSV. These and other deadly diseases aren’t going anywhere. They are here to stay.
The tail end of the COVID-19 Pandemic still has a punch in terms of
deaths and significant other harms, such as mental, psychological, and financial damage—and the overflowing of our hospitals and clinics. The pandemic did not end, as declared on May 11, 2023. Like many political
declarations throughout history, that declaration was, at best, wishful thinking.
Plus, other significant yet less active infectious diseases, such as Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and Malaria, are still very active in the US, at least seasonally.
Of particular concern right now in terms of spread is what the CDC calls the “Triple-Demic.” This involves all three earlier-mentioned diseases: COVID-19, the Flu, and RSV. Catching one of them is of significant concern. Catching all three at the same time could readily be deadly.
To make matters worse, this continuing and growing exposure to all these infectious diseases and others is happening when many businesses have begun requiring their employees to return to their workspaces at least four days a week, and some employers are pushing them to do so five days a week. For these employees and their employers, the “hybrid work model” used in recent years is dead or all but dead.
Plus, those who refuse to comply or ignore the corporate rules on this critical issue are increasingly being fired or at least passed over for bonuses or promotions. And many businesses have installed attendance monitoring, which would have been considered an intolerable insult in the past. So, most employees are complying with the new rules.
Infectious disease spread is one of the greatest dangers facing Americans and all people living worldwide. But few Americans and their bosses realize this. We all tend to ignore it until a pandemic-sized attack kills millions of “Our” people. It’s called “tribalism”—a powerful force of nature inbred in us all.
And even then, we have heavily discounted the value of the deaths of nearly 1 million elderly Americans who were casualties in the war against COVID-19. You will see no monuments to them in Washington, DC, or town halls across the land. They have been long forgotten and are gone without a single trace. Not even their name lightly scratched on a tablet remains.
We forget that infectious diseases have killed hundreds of times more people throughout history than atomic or chemical weapons.
An estimated 39,000 people died in the nuclear attack on Nagasaki. 66,000 in Hiroshima. Or roughly 110,000. That’s it for nuclear weapons. No Americans were killed.
Chemical weapons used in the American Civil War killed an estimated 220,000 American soldiers. (And infectious diseases possibly killed twice that number, or some 440,000 more.) In WWI, they killed an estimated 53,000 Americans. (And infectious diseases possibly killed some 45,000 more.) In WWII, 220,000. (And infectious diseases, perhaps some 180,000 more.)
In the Korean War, 36,000. (And infectious diseases possibly killed many more.) In the Vietnam War, 58,000. (And infectious diseases possibly killed many more.)
That is all. So, thus far, it has not been atomic weapons or chemical weapons that have taken an astronomical toll on American lives.
Instead, it has been infectious disease spread, either nature-made or human-manufactured, that has so devastated Americans—and most other people around the world.
Accordingly, we must spend more of our national security and defense funding on risk-managing infectious disease spread. Instead, we spend almost all those funds on atomic and chemical offensive, deterrent, and
defensive weapons. How can this make sense? When and how will it end?
Of course, the threat of death and destruction from the massive and widespread use of atomic weapons is high if they are ever used again. But they have not been used since WWII. And because they are uncontrollable mass destruction weapons and expose users to equal or more significant retaliation due to their high and quick traceability as to source, they might never be used again.
It was the bubonic plague (the “Black Death”) in the Middle Ages that killed roughly 50 million people, estimated to be half the people in the world at that time. And in recent years, infectious diseases have often been the third most likely cause of death worldwide.
Thus far, COVID-19 has killed 1.2 million Americans. And roughly 7 million worldwide. Most of them were elderly. The so-called “disposables.”
The 1918 Flu Pandemic, called “the mother of all pandemics,” killed an estimated 675,000 Americans and roughly 50 million worldwide. It circled the globe in less than four months. Most of the victims were 18-year-old kids to 43-year-old middle-aged adults. Unlike the older adults killed by COVID-19, they were severely and repeatedly missed by their families and their communities.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a week ago at the Davos meeting in Switzerland that a 50,000,000-death-scale pandemic is headed our way, and it is “not if, but when” it will arrive. We agree.
The bottom line is that infectious diseases have always been a force to reckon with. And with our “ever-shrinking” world, their threat to humankind is ever-increasing and more significant than any other risk. It is time we pay attention to this and act accordingly.
My teammates and I have invented and developed a significant digital tool that provides part of the solution. It is the best in the world. But everyone must now kick in. You can text me at 617-680-3127 to learn more—and explore how S2P’s VirusVigilant machine learning (and soon partially AI) driven digital platform can help protect your enterprise and its employees.
The URL for the Full Article on the WHO announcement, really a warning, is https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alert-world-health organization-director-general-has-norris-jd-mba-kzrqe.
© 2024 Safely2Prosperity LLC and Dr. John Norris. All Rights Reserved.
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