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Context is everything, esp. of the war over Ukraine [1]

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Date: 2023-03-07

Not looking for debate so much, as looking for deeper thought about the war raging over the lands of Ukraine, killing and injuring tens of thousands of people and unknowable numbers of the birds, wildlife, insects, biospheres of that land, as well as destroying the human homes and civil infrastructure, ruining the fields and farms, blighting the futures of all who must live in the damaged lands. Little of the press coverage of Ukraine addresses the chaos of the climate now inflicting the whole globe in cycles of heat-driven extreme weather events. What will happen in Ukraine if there is prolonged drought, or baking heat this summer? Or if extreme repeated rain events, or truly savage freezes interrupt the start of the major growing season? How many climate refugees are there in that area of the world already? Please point me to analysis if you know of one.

And — the novel corona virus we labeled SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve variants that then circle the globe as the wind & people go, unimpeded by governments’ policies and practices. Some variants, like XBB.1.5, are effectively a novel coronavirus to most bodies even if those bodies already have a previous variant, like one of the Omicron family, on board. [(A headline says that a “Japan team finds 10% of COVID Omicron patients suffer fatigue, other aftereffects.”) (Evidence is unclear to nonexistent that humans ever fully shrug off the original coronavirus — if you ever test positive and have COVID 19, then the virus has replicated in your body, is circulating in your body, and we don’t know much about what it will do to you in the future as we are all our own experiments with this. There is evidence that damage is cumulative, that each time we have COVID, more can and will go wrong with us. Have you noticed that yourself? I have. I also know that I’m still kicking now, even if my life will be shorter by years as a result of having had COVID — and I’ve never had severe symptoms. YMMV.)] Have you ever seen a post about the most common variants in Ukraine, or in western Russia? Among the US advisors or among the various soldiers of fortune from disparate lands moving among them, coming and going by train or plane?

The pandemic continues in Ukraine, but no one talks about how many times people there have gotten COVID, on average, nor the status of vaccinations, nor how many there now have some debilitating form of Long COVID (a/k/a #PASC). No discussion of #LongCovidKids in or from Ukraine, or what support might be offered families there. No discussion of what happens when the medical staff are ground down to dysfunction by a pandemic during war time. Any lessons of the Spanish Flu and WWI that could be considered are not brought up.

Until the daily reports start looking at #climatechaos, #extremeweather and #pandemic trends, until they at least nod at the ongoing #pandemic and cases of #COVID19 and which variants predominate and how infectious these airborne wisps really are (they could test the sewers in select places — there are US companies that could be hired to help with that), and the mounting numbers there with #LongCOVID, we won’t actually begin to understand the devastation of this particular war. We also won’t be looking at what may be being purchased by using military might to oppose a colonizing force, by the US grinding down Russia over Ukraine — a vast wasteland where once stood a major breadbasket of the world.

Nor will we think about addressing why we have billions more for the Pentagon than is requested, but we have no funding for planning a national policy for obtaining true vaccines to stop COVID and no money for a national let alone international drive for effective diagnosis and treatments to heal those sickened by this novel coronavirus. We all apparently hope it will pass us by and we will get over it, human life will just go on, and meanwhile we will just keep on trying to make a living without regard to climate chaos or pandemics. That’s OUR context.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/7/2156684/-Context-is-everything-esp-of-the-war-over-Ukraine

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