‽istis ponders...: Pistis reclaims the next slide please and downturning curves (weekending April 25th 2020)

‽istis reclaims the next slide please and downturning curves (weekending April 25^th 2020)

Understandably, the COVID-19 curves dominate the briefings:

· rates of new infections

· deaths of people in hospital (never alone but not with loved ones)

· deaths in care homes (also never alone…) and ‘at home’ deaths (including people dying with but not necessarily dying of…?)

· COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of total deaths

· the size of the gaps: between those needing PPE and those able to access PPE; between the number of tests carried out and those set out as the ‘goal’ (which is so very definitely different to a ‘target’)

· us in comparison to them (back-patting, hand-wringing or scapegoat-identifying is optional)

But ‽istis, cannot help but revisit territory mapped somewhat in recent blog entries, and wonders what it would take to lower other curves on other graphs or slides, for example (just a selection):

‽ the gap between rich and poor (the top 10% of households in the UK started 2019 with 45% of national wealth, while the poorest 10th held just 2%)[i]

‽ world firearm-related deaths which, it is reported, were higher than global conflict and terrorism deaths[ii] in every recent year apart from 1994 (the year of the Rwandan genocide) with, apparently, more Americans dying in firearm-related incidents (1.5million – killing each other or themselves) since 1968 than in all wars in US history (1.2million)[iii]

‽ suicide levels – with apparently close to 800,000 people dying across the world due to suicide every year[iv]

‽ the number of women killed by a current or former partner - surging by nearly a third as overall numbers of female victims of homicide hits a 14-year-high; 80 women killed by a partner or ex-partner in the year to March 2019[v]

‽ the unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world forced from home by conflict and persecution at the end of 2018. Among them nearly 30 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18[vi]

‽ the 1 in 20 children estimated to have been sexually abused in the UK (recent research with young people aged 11 – 17)^{^[vii]}

‽ the estimated 24.9 million people whom traffickers are robbing of their freedom and basic human dignity across the world[viii]

‽ the calculation of 8.8m early deaths a year from outdoor air pollution[ix]

‽ the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world[x]

‽ the contribution of malnutrition to nearly half of under-five deaths; affecting one in three children globally[xi]

‽ the current estimate that 52 million children under the age of five will die by 2030, largely of preventable causes (ibid) – is that really c.14,200 a day?!

‽ levels of unequal access to tested and approved existing vaccines; the apparent 20 million children who do not receive basic inoculation, and 1.5 million children under five who die from vaccine-preventable diseases every year (ibid)

‽ …you might like to research and add your own (graphs and curves: of flora, fauna, animal, sea life, insects, habitat, flooding, drought and on and on and the connections between them across our delicately balanced, perhaps poised-on-the-edge world - for future blogs...), checking the statistics and the sources where possible, asking critical questions - perhaps mostly of ourselves…

And ‽istis wonders whether the apparent new-found perspective:

· the ‘world turned upside down’/’things can never be the same again’ sentiment

· the 20:20 vision of what perhaps really matters

· the capacity for extensive state intervention (at least until the debts need repaying)

· the fast-tracked medical research and development

· the apparent recognition by so many of what and who is important…

will extend to make a difference when there is no longer a sufficient threat to ‘us’ - to those who hold the power, who call the shots (and often take or at least order the military shots, or who play the golf shots), who benefit, are enriched, usually win, and strangely keep rolling the double sixes on the dice used in the global crap game.

Dice loaded, perhaps, possibly, maybe by decades and centuries of exploitation and profit; by smart-targeted, behavioural-insight-informed psychology and algorithmically crunched mass-gathered data; by prejudice-empowered discrimination and oppression; by a sense of superiority and entitlement (as though you had any say in matters of birth or brain or brawn); by denying rights; by rigging the system; by controlling the movement of what is shown on the next slide please - and even deciding whether there is indeed a next slide, please…

If there were daily briefings on some of these other matters, then just imagine how different the world might be?