What should we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?

1. Wet meat markets are cesspools of filth and disease perpetuation and creation. Shut them down!
2. Biological warfare is a real and dangerous possibility and every country should be prepared to combat it.
3. Western (or any) cultural conventions like shaking hands are outdated. We can bow to show respect without infecting others. The tradition grew out of Viking testing of weapons-in-hand and no longer makes sense.
4. Everyone should wear masks in public when they are sick. The Japanese learned this long ago. (I lived there for four years.)
5. In Truth We Trust. Prayers and hopes won’t help, neither will political wishfulness or lies. Science has or will get the answer. False VABEs will still kill you.
6. We live in an amazing era in which we can identify base pair by base pair virtually any living organism. Truly amazing compared with what we knew and/or could do 100 years ago.
7. The global desire to “maximize profits” at the expense of local supply chains puts nations at risk for essential materials. “Sustainable profits” would take into account the need for resiliency in the face of major crises. Don’t plan on not having a crisis.
8. In the end, we must globally decide the value of human life versus the quality of human life. How much do we “spend” to keep people alive and to extend life even when may be unconscious or non-functioning.
9. Anyone who seeks to maximize profits at the expense of and while abusing the “Commons” (air, water, soil, flora, fauna and the underprivileged) should be regulated and constrained. People should not profit while defiling the Commons that we all share.
10. There is no such thing as “inalienable human rights.” Nature grants no such rights. Rights are granted by governments. Governments should be held accountable for their abuse of the Commons. Viruses don’t care about what you believe your rights are.
11. Everything comes down to VABEs. Unless we can change what people believe, things won’t change.
12. Humans tend to make short-term decisions that actually are self-destructive and destructive to the Commons.