We're hitting the year and half mark for a global pandemic.
True second waves have come and are being managed on a the global scale.
Vaccines are being distributed and holes in the supply lines are being found and hopefully repaired.
The next major challenge for the world is figuring out how to "restart the system."
Back when originally looking a pandemic level event I anticipated a year and a half on the short side and closer to three years on the more realistic side.
Here we are.
the year and a half mark.
The vaccine development went roughly as anticipated.
Streamlined, tested, and beginning distribution on track for a "best case" year and a half scenario for a full global recovery.
But best cases are not always real world cases and now we're seeing where global distribution lines have had problems before but were largely ignored because they had band-aids placed over them by NGO's and aid organizations.
We're seeing mistrust across community lines because of generations of abuse by those in power and those that fell in line supporting supremist ideologies since the founding of the United States and the establishment of global organizations like the United Nations.
What the Covid pandemic has done is pulled bandages that looked clean on the outside away from festering wounds threatening sepsis underneath.
Three year to full recovery now that these vails are being pulled back for the larger public does not seem nearly as unreasonable as people originally thought at the initial outbreaks.
Our next major task, as a nation, and as a world is addressing and healing the wounds that have been exposed.
A full recovery isn't just getting people back to work. It's looking at our economic systems foundation and seeing what was shaken, or even destroyed, by the past year and half of this pandemic and rebuilding them.
To some of the people on top it feels like the whole world is shaking back and forth and that everything is falling apart. That's because they never saw the people working below to keep the foundations from collapsing. And now that those people in the foundations are doing the real and hard work, shoring up the foundations, replacing keystones that crumbled it can be terrifying.
But I gotta tell ya man, from down here where we're working. It's never seemed more stable. Watching communities band together, finding people food, shelter, and seeing many of the inequities of the world begin strides to balance. It looks far from unstable. It looks, though precarious as the work is being done, like the foundations are healing and that things are very, very slowly, getting better.
And, as recovery and rebuilding moves forward, even if we do hit a level of productivity and national and global stabilization as it was before the pandemic the foundations being built now, supporting the upper levels that sway back and forth above the clouds. scaring those with loose grips and no guard rails. Are going to be stable for generations to come. Ensuring that the children now, those watching us fret and worry and trying to figure how to "fix it all" or just to survive it all will see the work that went into it. And the generations that come after will look back and wonder at our generation. The Boomers, the Xers, the Millennials', the Z's. Took a world nearing collapse and turned it into something that would out live even their great grand children.
Our next task is both and easier and harder than coming to grips with a global sickness.
It's looking at the foundations of our societies, on local, state, national, and global scales and finding ways to grieve the hardships that previous generations went through, current generations have survived, and accepting the reality of them.
The brutal honesties.
But still finding the willpower to keep moving forward.
To rebuild, to start looking at the biggest and oldest of the pillars and ask "Are they salvageable or will they collapse when all of these smaller emergency patches are removed and they have to take the full weight of their responsibilities?"
Looking forward is looking at infrastructure.
The most basic of basics.
Food
Shelter
Energy
Making sure that the infrastructure systems are agile and healthy.
One thing that the previous winter taught us is that many of these energy systems are not agile.
They have the beginnings of support from alternative sources, but still rely to heavily on one form or another.
Transitioning people from one energy sector to another is a lot easier than many think it will be.
The older people that have been in the oil and gas industries for a long time, from bottom to top, won't loose jobs, they'll just gain new ones.
Because even if the players change, and the field looks a little different, the task is still the same and the same difficulties and hurdles will still exist. And who better to help navigate these hurdles than the ones that have been taking them in stride for so long already.
So here's to you young ones.
Don't discount someone just because they come from one of the old systems. They're wisdom will help you achieve your goals by pointing out the pitfalls and difficulties.
To the older ones.
The young ones are going to try to fun fast and they are going to fall. We just got to make sure we can help them get back up and use our older tools to keep things running while they get their legs back underneath them.
And to both. Take each other with a grain of salt.
We may not always see eye to eye, and we may not always agree how to get the job done.
But we're all still running the same race and trying to get to the same end goal.
I'll be working on more specifics in the coming weeks as the data from the last year and a half starts to come together and be verified. Things like this, especially on such large scale, rarely move fast and what was thought true this time last year could not always verified until we saw actual trajectories. Like a ball striking the ground. We know it hit, and maybe were it came from, but until we see it bounce away, it's trajectory is largely guess work and catching to throw back still a task to come.
but I needed these words, more to get myself inspired again. To put my head back in the books and listen to those that are weary and those that have been listening and doing the things that no one person could.
But from what I've seen.
We got this.
It's still long way to go, but look at how far we've come.
Happy Pride everybody.
And stay safe.
Help is on the way.
