by Bob Krell — December 2020 Editorial for Healthy Indoors Magazine —
The waning days of 2020 were a stark reminder of the affect this year has had on all of us. In what is traditionally a festive time of celebrations, we are mostly confined to quarters. We are avoiding many of our normal holiday activities under a pale of gloom, as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In this country we have just witnessed a tumultuous election season, fraught with a flagrant denial of election results by an incumbent who seems more concerned about himself than the people he was elected to serve. Over 350,000 of those very people have now died as a result of the virus that the outgoing administration chose to downplay, rather than muster all our resources to fight. History will not be kind to those who failed to act appropriately in the face of this health and humanitarian catastrophe.
And there’s the climate crisis, which like this pandemic, has been politically weaponized. Denying overwhelming science in favor of flawed, biased opinions is not the way to successfully combat an existential threat like man-induced global warming or a worldwide outbreak of a deadly virus. We need to forego political tribalism and utilize the power of everyone working together to defeat the environmentally linked menaces we’ve unwittingly created. Yes Virginia, the COVID-19 pandemic is linked to climate change. And time is not on our side.
We collectively have amazing capabilities—as evidenced by the development of new vaccine technology to immunize against the SARS CoV-2 virus in less than a year. These vaccines have been a global effort. We appear to have created the necessary tools to reverse this growing pandemic, but it will be incumbent upon the wealthy nations to steward distribution to everyone around the world, not just hoard these new life-saving resources for the financially privileged few. Like climate change, COVID-19 is a global threat to all mankind. We need to recognize that and treat it as such.
2020 will indeed be remembered as an awful year by most of us. But it should also serve as a powerful wake-up call to work together to improve the future—for everyone, lest we go the way of the dinosaurs. Here’s to hoping we learn from this mess and make substantive, positive change going forward in 2021 and beyond.
On behalf of myself and the entire Healthy Indoors Magazine/IAQNET LLC team, we wish you all a safe and happier new year!
Bob Krell is Publisher of Healthy Indoors Magazine.
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