Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Yet Another Stress Event...


...That our various social and economic systems need to cope with. And, as if the Zika Virus wasn't scary enough already, doctors are now finding so many more things it is capable of adversely affecting.

Perhaps even more frightening than that, however, is the fact that the full impact of what this bug born bit of gene coding can do is only now being discovered, months after the virus itself became common knowledge; a fact that shouldn't surprise us at all. After all, just how much of a priority is proactive search and identify efforts between our CDC, and the World Health Organization.

One does need to be clear here, though. The fact is that these groups would probably like nothing more than to be more proactive in this regard but can't because they are already tasked with far more than they are adequately funded for; hence, as the article linked here indicates, the CDC coming forth to ask for an additional $1.9 billion in emergency aid to fight the thing. And one can only hope this will be enough to finally get the "barn door shut," in a manner of speaking.

What this illustrates quite clearly is that, as more of these events occur, we aren't ready for them and so have to act in catch up mode; a situation for which, thankfully, we've been fairly lucky with. But with so many other systems already being stressed to further degrees, especially in regards to the environment, we can only expect to have this sort of thing keep on occurring, and perhaps at an accelerating rate.

They'll no doubt find the money now to act on this as the CDC has requested, but what will the future hold out for on that regard? Will Congress ever get around to passing an environmental stress tax on those producers and consumers who's activities created, and now exacerbate the situation; providing an automatic allocation system to be ready for these emergencies? And even if they do summon that political will to act, will they then remain disciplined in restraining from dipping into it every time there's budgetary deficit?

If history is any indication at all we are left to conclude that the probabilities in this regard are not very encouraging at all.



Zika Virus Is Scary and We Need Money to Fight It, Officials Say

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See Also:


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