War and pandemics: lasting effects
The deaths and disruption coronavirus has created will have a lasting effect on the lives of seven billion people worldwide.
But, unlike most of the countless number of wars over human history, some will be beneficial.
Civilisation has not benefited or learned lessons from warfare, which, according to history, goes back to Mesopotamia in 2,700 BC.
The impact of coronavirus in death toll is minimal, almost insignificant compared with wars.
In the history of warfare, the 1939/45 conflict was the most deadly - killing between 70 to 85 million.
The pandemic global death toll so far is 70,000. One newspaper gives it in Britian as one in two million.
Insignificant statistically, yes, but the likely lasting impact and effect on the world is immense.
Wars and plagues have destroyed empires, changed continents and countries so it is strange to think that pandemics can have some benign effects.
That will surely be the case with coronavirus. It will certainly make life different, better in many ways.
We will soon forget the worries and hardships of 2020 and our new life should be in many ways be better and more healthy.
Unlike warfare, we can learn life changing lessons from today’s upheaval, affecting health, work, leisure, finance - our whole way of life.
We old people will not see it but the younger generations, now sadly beset with problems not of their making, have more reason to be cheerful than pessimistic.
T
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