NEW DISASTER, SAME PHASES

Just because it’s not an earthquake, hurricane, flood, or any other rapidly developing natural hazard event, doesn’t mean the coronavirus pandemic isn’t a natural hazard.  It is!  It’s just taken more time to develop as an event.  And due to it’s growing impact on vulnerable populations and global economies, it has transformed into a natural disaster in months instead of seconds.

In this age of instantaneous news and social media reporting, the global awareness of this disaster has traveled at the speed of light, not a speed which is necessarily beneficial.  Perhaps the speed is too fast, not allowing us the luxury of time to react appropriately without the spread of panic.  As with other natural disasters, there is a process through which this latest disaster must move, and it will.

Let’s recall that there are 6 fundamental phases to natural disasters –

  1. Preparedness – the time and activities in advance of an event, founded in the presumption of an impending occurrence

  2. The Event – the actual occurrence

  3. Response – the time and activities in which people and organizations respond to inputs from the event

  4. Recovery – the post-response period in which cooler minds prevail to address moving forward

  5. Rebuild – business as usual, and reconstruction of “what was”, with some modifications

  6. Mitigation – implementing lessons learned in the previous 5 steps, and only within the insufficient economic, political, social, cultural, and humanitarian constraints afforded

At this time, the coronavirus is somewhere between the second and third phases.  It certainly hasn’t finished impacting eventual victims, although activities have been underway to deal with the early outcomes.  The process is well beyond containment and slowly moving through response with the advent of more testing that should lead to a vaccine.  Fortunately, at least at this time, this event has not taken on the characteristics of the Black Death that wiped out millions in the middle 1300’s.  Given our medical advances and capacity development since, this latest disaster shouldn’t follow the same path.

So, for the vast majority of the world populations not familiar with disaster recovery, it’s important to understand this disaster is in process.  Granted, early responses by some political “leaders” hasn’t been what it could or should have been, whether intentional or through ignorance.  Rather, we must exercise patience, calm, diligence, and confidence that our scientific communities are best equipped to assess the situation and will develop the best means of response that will lead to the recovery and rebuild efforts.  This pandemic bullet has traveled too fast, and we must remain vigilant in following the preventative and corrective capacities at our disposal.  Pushing that wet rope uphill will not serve us.

On the back end though, can humanity ever effectively prepare, respond, and mitigate better for future events?  Given limited resources, our humanness, and past performances, most likely not.  Will our natural reactive, not proactive, instincts perpetuate the inevitable?  Or, will we choose a different path, one of real capacity, one of true regard for our sustainability?  Think positive!