Just a quick response and thoughts to my good friend MrsWolfies post
Opinion: Face Masks In The West Carry Their Own Problem, Stigma
I’m used to public face masks , as a Londoner, and as someone with a long term chronic condition.
4 times a week myself and the girl don a mask during the ‘risk’ parts of starting and ending my treatment.
Not to mention the ‘adult element’ of a different type of facemarks as props in adult scenes. I wonder if the sale of THOSE has increased?
In London its fairly frequent to see facemasks among a large number of cyclists due to the pollution. You can visibly see and taste the pollution in London, for instance from high points looking over the city, or arriving in a busy railways station in central London.
While China was one of the first countries to enforce public face mask wearing it was already common in the busier cities due to pollution. If you remember China still has coal burning power you may understand this.
IMAGE: View Across London from the North, showing pollution over the City..
As for the future. IF our Governments actually LEARN from this rather than clinging to the ‘Go Back To Normal’. We WILL reduce the falsehood of global trade and commerce and learn to ‘look after ourselves’ before we help others.
However this one a global scale seems hard to imagine as a reality.
IF WE as a country already had ‘In House’ Healthcare, rather than contracted, and transport we might be in a better economic sense to deal with the outcomes in the CURRENT situation
The psychological impacts are going to last a long time.
As I’m writing this, crude oil has a near negative value. Polluting airlines are lamenting their loss of business, and a cautious move towards humanity rather than Greed and Commerce seems to be happening. While you may wonder what this has to do with the Corona Viruses, historically most disasters have had the most effect on areas of Mass Population, and this is not the first time that civilisations have been severely affected, not by natural disaster but by the transition of pathogens to areas of no resistance.
I for one, welcome, not the suffering and stress of individuals, but the wake up call to the fact we are NOT immortal as a species, nor are we the ‘top of the food chain, when we can easily be beaten by a simple virus.
We cope by doing little things that patch up the wounds, clapping, rushing to make masks and gowns, sharing food resources, but in the long term, we need to change.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief
Recommended Viewing and Reading
The Power Of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil An Hours watch, but if your transport and imported food production is cut off. HOW DO YOU SURVIVE AS A COUNTRY?
NHS PLC There’s no way we will now get a National Health Service that is fully State Run. Since the introduction of Trusts and Centralisation of services, it seems an impossible future:(
I’ll finish with a quote from one of my favourite bands:
What would you leave behind when all your fields are dead
When your territories are dried out and your cities drowned and swept?
What would you leave behind when those who bear your name
Are born in that place that you wrecked?
What would you leave behind when you’re no longer there?
To deny or to despair
They’re really just the same
And everything between
It means we have to change
Cos when a one forgets
Their world begins to fade
And all the shapes and shades
That made their colours see
Well they suddenly turn grey
Then they’re no longer there
Rope, Roses, Red and Ramblings 
Interesting thoughts, Thankyou 😊
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