Tom Curtin Chart Cartoon 1 May

Heed the crisis warnings

May 1st, 2023

After a crisis, the comment I most commonly hear is: “We didn’t see it coming.”

My answer is: “Why not?”

Volcanologists know that volcanoes will explode. Airlines know that they may have to deal with a crash. Food companies know they may have a recall.

A crisis is not a sudden event that comes out of the blue. It creeps up on you. But most tend to ignore the warning signs.

So how about Covid? The last Pandemic was one hundred years ago in 1917/18, so what’s changed. Absolutely nothing. It is highly likely that we will have another pandemic in the future. When? Who knows? Tomorrow or in 100 years’ time.

Are we ready? No. Except for Sweden where they have an epidemiologist in charge and they have already completed their inquiry and made recommendations for the future.

Meantime in the UK, the inquiry hasn’t even started looking at lessons to be learnt.

So if there is a pandemic tomorrow, Britain is totally unprepared and the response will be the usual ‘shoot from the hip’. The problem with this is that the politicians sometimes forget to take the gun from the holster and shoot themselves in the foot.

Artificial Intelligence? it’s been around for years but suddenly it’s a crisis and the world is going to be destroyed.

How about water? Well, how about it? We’ve had an exceptionally warm winter in the Northern hemisphere and some poor people’s skiing holidays have been ruined. (Pass me a tissue.)

So? The melting waters from the ice feed rivers and right now, Italy’s biggest river, the Po, is at levels that are normally found in late June. And the Po is the lifeline that feeds agriculture along its valley. So, there will be a food crisis. In France, villages are at war over water.

But when the rumblings of a crisis are in the distance, it is too easy to adopt the Ostrich syndrome and put our heads in the sand and only take them out when there is a full-blown crisis.

The time to prepare for a crisis is before it happens.

I live in hope.

Have a good week.

Tom

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