These are instructive times. Are you paying attention?
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The coronavirus is not only causing a few problems. It’s highlighting a few things I suspect a lot of us feel uncomfortable confronting.
Try these for size.
Why do we, as a society, tolerate homelessness? Why do we tolerate some individuals taking billions of dollars out of circulation while others have to live and beg in the streets — even in the richest nation on earth? I’ve lived in New York. I’ve seen them.
But the truth is, there are homeless people in every city in every country. Why is that?
Why do we pay entertainers, like footballers and movie stars, millions of dollars while paying a pittance to first responders and health workers.
Who are the important people right now? The highly paid executives or the workers growing or making stuff and delivering it to the supermarkets and hospitals?
Right now, the guy stacking the shelves in your local supermarket or the one driving the truck delivering PPE to hospitals is more important than those highly paid executives worrying about their bonuses because the market has tanked.
If you don’t work in the essential industries that keep us alive, the people that do are more important than you or me at the moment. Question is, why do we pay them so little when we all depend on them? And, yes, we depend on them all the time, not just during times of crisis.
You really have to question our priorities when we allow our governments to spend more on armaments than health care.
Since 1945, we have lived with the fear of nuclear annihilation, while nations spent billions producing and stockpiling nuclear weapons no-one in their right mind is ever going to use. We have more bombs and missiles, that cost millions each, than ventilators, that cost twenty-five thousand dollars.
Why is that?
And now, we’re watching health systems around the world collapse for lack of funding and adequate planning. Some of us live in countries with health systems that may cope with this…