Skip the War, Pass Me the Hypospray

by Phineas Dash

The war is everywhere but it's not the most important story unfolding, at least in terms of our ultimate fate in this century.

The crisis that will threaten our polities, our societies and our existence in the coming decades will make this war and the wars that follow irrelevant, or simply contributing factors.

The unfolding story of consequence is the disease currently called SARS, about which little is known except that it is spreading quickly and is often fatal.

It will be a story repeated in one way or another for the rest of this decade and this half of the century. For awhile, not many people will notice this, because the stories will seem unrelated. But eventually there will be a generally acknowledged crisis and it will be called a public health crisis.

It will certainly test what is called the public health system, which is not a system at all, at least in the United States. But though it will resonate with the public by being designated a public health problem, even that won't be exhaustively accurate.

Another way of analyzing it would be as an environmental crisis. If and when this becomes a consensus explanation, or even a media-accepted Big Story, it's going to shake the planet.

We would learn that many more illnesses that the public was allowed to realize are caused by environmental factors: air and water pollution; the interactions of chemicals in everything we consume or touch; diseases in food caused by lack of screening or by additives and alterations; the changing climate of global heating; and all of these combined with overcrowded cities, sick buildings and air travel that spreads pathogens rapidly around the world.

Some information will emerge but a lot won't, partly because we don't know very much. It will all stay "mysterious." Of course, we have the computer power to begin to put data together and maybe have a fighting chance of figuring it out. But it will take a big effort, and would likely result in big changes in how we live. Some people---like the people making big money from the way we live now---aren't going to like that.

We will feel utterly betrayed, because the companies that make money making and using these chemicals and biological agents, using genetic manipulation, causing the pollution, etc. have made damn sure nobody is forthrightly studying these factors and their interactions, with anything like the appropriate resources and level of concern.

We will feel betrayed, that is, if we ever find out. We probably won't. We'll follow the news reports about mystifying diseases that kill quickly and dramatically (and never suspect the ones that have relatively minor or transitory symptoms and perhaps cumulatively fatal effects) and in the end we'll never know what hit us.

A public health crisis will eventually get dramatic enough for reporters to be embedded in hospitals and research labs. We'll learn about as much from them concerning how we got in this fix as we learn from reporters embedded in a particular tank division. Maybe we'll watch ourselves die off on TV.

This will be happening as poor people in backward countries are running out of water. Non-poor people in advanced countries will be paying for their water at rates we would now regard as fantastically high. But then, look at the gas pump and remember 1977. That lack of water in places with lots of people will add to the public health crisis everywhere.

But let's not worry about this now. We are embedded in TVland, wielding weapons of mass distraction. Let them drink oil.