HISTORYREPEATSITSELF?

Pandemics, meaning a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time, have also happened throughout history. For instance, bubonic plague/’Black Death” in medieval times, so called Spanish Flu after the First World War, and more recently COVID19.

There have also been repeated example of mass migration by people across history. For instance

(i) emigration to the New World and the settlement of the American West,

(ii) in the last few years people fleeing conflict and persecution e.g. and Afghan refugees, and most recently the war in Ukraine.

The last of these is the worst instance of a repeated event – war George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It was efforts to avoid a repeat of global conflict which led to the creation of first the League of Nations (1920) and later the United Nations (1945)

Above is the official flag of the United Nations

Thinking of these bad events we should ask two questions ‘Can we prevent?’ and ‘Can we prepare?’ The dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid smashing into the Earth and making it very cold. Last year NASA’s ‘DART’ mission showed us that it was possible to divert an asteroid’s course, so hopefully we won’t have the same end. Another way to prevent mass extinction due to climate change is not to waste electricity because that helps to stop fossil fuel being burned which is polluting (you can do this too)

If we can’t prevent pandemics, can we prepare better for them? We could listen to organisations like the United Nations Children's Fund (“UNICEF”) which had recommendations for primary health care. Governments could continue to invest in vaccination technology and create laws to reduce the circulation of the disease

In conclusion, we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking every event repeats itself. If a football team loses one week, it doesn’t mean they will lose the next week. There are types of bad events which seem to re-occur and we should think about how to prevent and prepare for them. We should also, however, think about how to make good events happen again, such as countries accepting refugees Some good events seem to happen without trying, like weekends.

Written by Sylvester