On Shaman's Rock

How many kids will die?

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

There are days this summer when my mind spins like a roulette wheel about to fly off its spindle and crash into a wall.

I sometimes think it is this summer’s hot and unsettled weather that is making me feel that way. It’s not. It’s all the unsettling crisis-like events swirling around us all.

Some of the events are far away, but still threatening to us, and others are on our doorsteps. It hurts to think that much of what threatens us is preventable or solvable. It hurts even more thinking about how little progress we are making in eliminating, or at least reducing, these threats.

The menacing threat on our doorsteps, of course, is the Covid-19 Delta variant. It is starting to sicken and kill unvaccinated children. It’s not so bad yet in Canada, but Canadian institutions always lag behind the U.S. in collecting and distributing data important to its citizens.

Covid-19 infecting children is a developing nightmare. In the United States almost 4.5 million children have tested positive for Covid since the pandemic began. More shocking, 94,000 children tested positive in the first week of August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The U.S. Centres for Disease Control reported a 27.3-per-cent increase in the seven-day average for Covid hospital admissions among children zero to 17 years old. That increase was seen in just 14 days in late July and early August.

Vaccines have made Covid-19 controllable. If everyone got the shot, infections, hospitalizations and deaths would be minimal.

The fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who refuse vaccination and are willing to let children get sick and perhaps die is beyond shocking. 

Also on our doorsteps and threatening our futures is climate change. Western North America is on fire, other parts have dried to dust and still others are flooding under a summer of violent storms.

We have been warned about global warming and climate change for more than 100 years. Amateur scientist and women’s right activist Eunice Foote experimented with carbon dioxide in the 1850s and concluded: “An atmosphere of that gas [CO2] would give to our Earth a high temperature.”

Despite even more conclusive evidence, more warnings, a lot of political talk and some weak-kneed action, the fires and the floods grow worse. So do CO2 emissions.

Meanwhile far abroad, the mentally-deranged Taliban, who treat women as sex slaves and stop children from reading books, have taken over Afghanistan. No big deal for us in North America? 

No big deal - until they get their hands on a nuclear bomb from neighbouring Pakistan, North Korea or China. The Taliban goal is to eliminate all ‘infidels’.

The biggest threat, however, is ourselves. We allow ourselves to be governed by weak leaders who worry that firm stands and strong actions needed for solutions to the threats will threaten their re-election. Making masks and vaccinations mandatory would end Covid but would make some voters unhappy.

While all of this swirls around us, our federal politicians are stomping through our neighbourhoods sucking up to us for votes.

We are told we need a federal election - in the midst of the most serious health crisis in modern history and an unprecedented developing climate crisis - despite one being held only 22 months ago. The need is simply a wish in the mind of the current minority government. 

A minority Parliament is probably better for finding solutions to our problems. With a minority the government has to listen to and work with the other political parties. Majority governments think they know it all, don’t listen to anyone else and carry on doing what they want.

Covid, climate change, and international upheavals are major threats that require bipartisan solutions. Also, solutions require money.

Elections Canada estimates that the Sept. 20 federal election will cost us an estimated $610 million, roughly $100 million more than the one 22 months ago. That will be the most expensive election in Canadian history.

The cost could be higher depending on how the fourth wave of Covid-19 develops.

Six hundred million plus seems like a ton of money that could be used to help fix current problems and threats.

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