What You Need to Know About the Reality of Pandemics

And it’s important to understand what pandemics are and have been in the history of humanity, in the history of civilization, to know what you’re really looking at. Many people never take the time to look into this. They just assume it’s something. They assume it has a cause or they give it a cause and they try to go on with their life to make this all external to them.

But pandemics, historically and by their very nature, are very large if they become global. They last for years and they generally come in waves. And they’re very difficult to combat, even with the marvels of our modern medical world and science. This new Coronavirus poses a very unique challenge to a world that’s super connected, where people travel all over the world and have massive engagements with others. Most of humanity lives in very densely populated…in close proximity to one another.

And so in an environment in a modern world, a pandemic can go global in six weeks. So here we are about four months out, about four and a half months, and already the Coronavirus is in every country and territory except for Antarctica, last I heard. So this thing is spreading very fast. We have no vaccine; we do not understand its mechanism. It’s a complex virus. And so it’s being really difficult to discern what it can do. And already we’re finding out some of its impacts currently on children, or on people who’ve had mild symptoms who end up having strokes. We don’t really know the pathology of this thing yet. We’re learning, we’re trying to learn, but we’re early in this game. We’re like in the first phase of a bigger event.

And you know, when you’re in the early phase of something, you really can’t see how it’s going to turn out. Everybody wants to know what the…when the end is going to be and when the vaccine is going to be and when we can return to normal. But it’s like being in the middle of a hurricane. You can’t see actually how it started and you can’t see when it’s going to end. We know with hurricanes that they tend to pass over. But something like this is taking hold in the world today.

So we’re dealing with a long crisis, longer than most people think. And the economic destruction of this, as we’re already seeing, could be very profound. It will put every country in the world into at least a deep recession, and maybe even something like a depression. So it’s going to cost a phenomenal amount of money and wealth to combat it. And most countries do not have that wealth.

And we can only hope that our medical systems can hold up under the strain of this. Already they’ve been maxed, taken to the limit in Europe and parts in New York City, for example. So the impact of this, even initially, is very, very profound. And most of the people who have contracted this virus may not even know they ever had it, or had very mild symptoms, but they’re still transmitting during a certain phase of their illness. So this thing is growing in the world. Yesterday over 104,000 confirmed cases were stated, were revealed. And of course, what really is happening is ten to 40 times that number of people are actually infected depending on the country, depending on a country’s testing and medical facilities. So we’re dealing with something that is growing rapidly, but it’s probably only affected a very small percentage of the world population yet.

So the recovery from this may take much longer. We don’t even know the impact this is going to have, particularly if it’s ongoing and continuous. Then we really can’t recover from it economically. We can adapt; we can survive, but there will be huge costs and huge tolls to people’s lives.

It’s important to understand about pandemics they are the most destructive events in human history. No amount of war has produced the fatalities and casualties that pandemics have produced. In the sixth century in the Byzantine Empire [known as Byzantium], there was a massive pandemic. It was the biggest empire in the world at the time. They lost half their population to it over a course of several years.

And of course, 1918 is the closest we have to anything like this. And we’ve learned a lot from that. And that’s important to read about these things to understand that. “What am I dealing with here?” Rather than just: “Oh, it’s just a super flu” or you know, “It’ll be over soon” and “We’ll have a vaccine by fall.” What is a pandemic? What are we facing?

So I encourage you to look into this because we’re dealing with reality now, not just human perception, not just conjecture. We’re dealing with a beast that’s going rampant in the world. And though you may never get sick, it could pull the economic life right out from under you.

And a situation like this has everybody’s name on it, really. If humanity’s ever going to unite, it’s going to unite over a threat that threatens everyone, rich and poor in all countries.

This pandemic will destroy wealth at a phenomenal level—public wealth, wealth of governments, everything. I don’t think anyone has ever done a real assessment of what it could actually cost. But it’s costing a lot right now. So I think it’s important.

And I want to mention that pandemics are naturally recurring events that have huge impacts on nations and civilization. Since humans began living together in high-density…densely living together, there have been epidemics and, in a larger sense, pandemics.

So you know, in the world it’s estimated there are something like a million and a half viruses out there, and science only knows about 3,000 of them. So when people go into the deep recesses of jungles and caves, when people bring wild animals into food markets, you’re bringing elements of nature into human proximity. And of course, people who live in the jungle face these things and often die from them. But when these things come into a more public arena and then are dispersed within a nation or beyond a nation, now we’re bringing elements of nature into public exposure that have laid hidden for almost forever. Ebola is a perfect example of that.

So this really is a product of our disruption of nature and our misuse of nature as well because pandemics live as a potential in nature, as do simple illnesses and epidemics and everything else. The history of pandemics is just incredible in what they can do and what they have done.

So I think it’s important to be in the real world about this. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not…People try to make it, whatever, relate to what they’re doing or whatever they think. But the challenge for everyone is, can we face reality? And what is reality? Reality is everything that’s going on beyond your thinking and assumptions. Now your thinking and assumptions affect your behavior, which can affect reality. But reality as a total force is something that is beyond our thoughts and beliefs. And you either can engage with reality or you’re disabled and can’t engage with reality.

So the first step is to become engaged with reality: “I need to know about this. I need to know what it’s doing. I need to know how it may affect my life and circumstances. I need to know how I can become stronger, more resilient, more competent in the face of it.” There’s no running away. The epidemic is even infecting natives in the deep Amazon. There’s no running away. You can’t go out and hide from this and have it pass over.

So the first calling is to be in the world, to be a world person, to take responsibility for your circumstances and to face those things that may have a direct impact upon you and the people you care about. And many people won’t do that, or can’t do that. But you need to do that. If we’re disengaged from reality, reality will overtake us.