Disaster and Disease
A match made in hell
In 2023 to 2024 there were 11.2 million people displaced by disasters in the United States. (source)
During the acute phase of a disaster, evacuation centers are organized for everyone who needs to leave their home. I know because I was in one in 2020. Large groups of people in close contact with one another for anywhere from one week to several months.
The refugee camp where I stayed was a Seventh Day Adventist facility in Soquel, CA, near Santa Cruz. It was in the early days of the pandemic and, even though, there were a number of precautions in place, a lot of folks hadn’t been made aware that COVID was airborne.
I have never seen any statistics about the number of infections that occurred during that event.
If you fast-forward to now, with disasters becoming more and more severe and COVID all but forgotten by most people, the lack of precautions and monitoring, the potential for the mass spreading of disease is guaranteed.
“The spread of communicable diseases among the evacuees will also exact a toll. January is the height of the flu season, and California is experiencing “very high” levels of flu, according to the CDC. Flu and COVID-19 will likely spread rapidly among the tens of thousands of people forced to evacuate to shelters or temporary living quarters with friends or family.” (source)
Although focusing primarily on tropical cyclones it is estimated that excess deaths, beyond deaths caused by the storm itself, can be as many as 7–11,000 deaths per storm. The dangers presented by wildfires, including the inhalation of smoke, would, most likely, raise those numbers.
Often, staying in a disaster shelter disrupts routine hygiene and sanitation practices, as well as access to basic health services. Additionally, individuals in disaster shelters are in distress due to the nature of the incident(s) that forced them to evacuate their homes. Proximity to others and disruption of normal health care and sanitation creates conditions where potential outbreaks can occur, as have happened in the past. Since 2020, public health officials have had to consider yet another priority when assessing disaster shelters: preventing the spread of COVID-19. (source)
The above quote was taken from an article written in May 2021, back in the “good old days” when there was, at least, an awareness of the dangers of disease transmission.
At one time this may have presented as a problem, that time is gone. We are now in, yet another, predicament, and the outcome will be disastrous.
The story of the wheelchair bound man and his disable son dying while waiting for an ambulance to evacuate them during the recent fires in Los Angeles is going to be, if it isn’t already, a much repeated story.
This article by
explains this in much greater detail.People will continue to be affected by climate change, people will continue to ignore the threat posed by COVID, people will be forced into proximity with hundreds of others, people will be infected, people will be disabled, and people will die as a result.
Welcome to Hell.
There is no doubt that the end of the U.S. as we know it is at hand. It will be a death by small cuts and a slow one. But it has started. All there's needed is for one really large disaster, such as a major weather event, like we had in Appalachia last year, or another airborne pandemic to finally break the financial back of the county. With Trump having gutted the national response teams, this only makes things so much worse. We haven't even begun to see the results of all of these economic policies but we will very soon. Texas is just the tip of the spear.
Thanks for the mention friend!