Day 46 Priorities; or, Profits and Prophets

I sit on the horns of a dilemma today. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, and it isn’t the first time since The Trump Pandemic that I’ve been here, nor do I suspect it will be the last.

What is a true priority in this dystopian dream we’re living?

In today’s Coronavirus Outbreak news aggregator, I read this: “Early in 2018, 30 microbiologists, zoologists and public health experts from around the world gathered at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva to draw up a priority list of dangerous viruses—specifically, those for which no vaccines or drugs were in development. It included “Disease X”: a stand-in for all of the unknown pathogens, or devastating variations on existing pathogens, that had yet to emerge. The coronavirus now sweeping the world, officially SARS-CoV-2, is a prime example.”

Once again, I’m relegated to basic math. 2018? It’s 2020. What did we do, or what did the 30 worldwide wizards do with those two years?

It wasn’t because they didn’t want to do something. They did.

The article continued: “Ultimately it wasn’t science that stopped significant action from being taken on finding ways to deal with ‘Disease X.’ According to some infectious-disease experts, the scientific tools already exist to create a kind of viral-defense department—one that would allow the pursuit of a broad range of global projects, from developing vaccines and drugs that work against a wide range of pathogens to monitoring disease hot spots and identifying potential high-risk viruses, both known and unknown. What’s lacking is resources.”

You know that’s a code word, right? Resources. It means money.

“The work that stalled included efforts to design panviral drugs and vaccines that would be effective against a wide range of strains: all types of influenza, for instance, or a substantial group of coronaviruses rather than just one. One key obstacle: Such drugs and vaccines are unlikely to be profitable, making them unappealing to pharmaceutical companies.”

Um, exactly who decreed that pharmaceutical companies needed to be obscenely profitable anyway? [Don’t get me started on the opioid crisis and the Sacklers.] And why, even if they want to make money—and don’t all companies?—aren’t there public health arms of the exact same companies where those 30 wizards could go to do their work?

Opinion columnist Thomas Friedman has one answer. “We need a president who is a cross between F.D.R., Justice Brandeis and Jonas Salk. We got a president who is a cross between Dr. Phil, Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Seuss.” [with many prostrations of heartfelt apology to that genius of rhyme and reason Dr. Seuss]

Unfortunately, I’m not sure the president, although I’d love to wrap the entirely of the problem around his feet and be the cause of a spectacular face plant, is actually the problem. Instead, I think he might be a symptom.

I think Mr. Trump is why so many of us are spending so much of our time turning back to glance over our own shoulders. We’re second-guessing ourselves because we have no guiding light.

Governors and hospital administrators all over the United States are tearing out their hair trying to get the materials necessary for the massive testing that’s necessary for our localities to open again.

As one hospital medical director said, “It’s great to have innovation from academia and the private sector to come up with new ways to do things as efficiently as possible, but on the other hand we do need national coordination.”

It doesn’t exist. And I see why.

There are no priorities. Literally, none. Except those of Mitch “Marie Antoinette” McConnell, to wit, we Republicans have to win at all costs. What’s a little death?

“Mr. Trump continues to insist that the current approach is adequate. ‘America’s testing capability and capacity is fully sufficient to begin opening up the country, totally,’ he said at one point this month. At another, he said, ‘We are doing more testing I think than probably any of the governors even want.’ That is not true.”

Mr. Friedman makes an exquisitely logical surmise: “Because this virus was actually triggered by our polarization from the natural world. And it will destroy us—physically and economically—if we stay locked in a polarized, binary argument about lives versus livelihoods.”

Our polarization from the natural world. Of course. That’s not news.

We are indeed polarized with Mother Nature. She is simply being who She is.

Mr. Friedman’s reasoning goes like this: “Here is why: When you listen to Trump, one of his consistent themes is that everything was just ‘perfect’ with our economy until—out of nowhere—this black swan, called Covid-19, showed up from China and wrecked it all. It’s true, this virus did come out of Wuhan, China, but it was anything but a black swan that no one could have expected. It was actually ‘a black elephant.’”

Picture that. Black Swans are strikingly beautiful; a Black Elephant would be even more majestic than the garden variety pachyderm already is.

“The term ‘black elephant’ was coined by environmentalist Adam Sweidan. It’s a cross between ‘a black swan’—an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications—and the ‘elephant in the room’—a looming disaster that is visible to everyone, yet no one wants to address.

Covid-19 was a black elephant. It is the logical outcome of our increasingly destructive wars against nature.”

There’s a scientific explanation for this Black Elephant, but I’m much more interested in the spiritual explanation.

Have you noticed that in the past ten years or so there’s been a huge outbreak of all kinds of allergies? Mold, food, dander, hayfever, you name it. Allergies are rife, rampant, and ricocheting through the population of the West. Why do you suppose that is?

Mystically, allergies come from alienation from the environment.

We are alienated from our own world. And, the more I think on it, I can see we’ve done it—at least partially—to ourselves. Mr. Friedman maintains, “We need to find a much more harmonious balance between economic growth and our ecosystems.”

Okay, I’ll buy that, but that would mean ...

We have to make coordination a priority, and to do that, we have to take cooperation as a guideline for every thought, word, and deed.

And I, for one, don’t think the Executive Branch has it in them to do that. Nor do I think the Senate is interested in either priority. The House, only because Nancy Pelosi is so fierce, maybe, and the Judiciary—well, thank God for Notorious RBG and Elena Kagan.

Mr. Friedman affirms my point. “The bottom line is that Mother Nature has been telling us something huge in this crisis: ‘You let everything get out of balance and go to extremes. You ravaged my ecosystems and unleashed this virus. You let political extremism ravage your body politic. You need to get back into balance, and that starts with using the immune system that I endowed you with.’”

Remember those margarine ads? “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Actually, we aren’t fooling Mother Nature. We’re fooling ourselves, or we were until Mother Nature did what She does in an attempt to redress the imbalance.

Mother Nature, Beloved, is onto us. And She doesn’t give a damn about the profitability of things or about our measly attempts at prophecy.

Back to the Live Updates: “But as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds, systems of global cooperation and investment have started to emerge. And the conversation about what it would take to prepare for the next pandemic has started.”

Yes, I know. Of course it has. But, you see, the conversation was started more than two years ago at the W.H.O. in 2018. When its prophets met the profit question, the conversation dwindled into what is now a deafening silence. Coronavirus crickets, you might say.

A Seeds reader wrote me the other day about the nature of the word quarantine. It comes from Italian meaning 40 days, and refers to a period of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals, or plants on arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying some infectious or contagious disease.

I say, let’s cancel the White House coronavirus briefings, and quarantine the lot of them to media silence and contemplation until they can agree with astrologer Rick Levine. Today, he ended his prediction for everyone with “The collective good trumps individual need today.”

Priorities matter, Beloved. Sure, profits are nice, and most prophets are not, but until we elevate coordination and its twin cooperation, we will not end this dystopian purgatory of our own creation.

Let’s pray for our world and all of its inhabitants from now on. Coordination and Cooperation, no exceptions. Amen.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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