Tom Brungardt, Past President of the JC Breakfast Optimist Club, was the guest speaker at the December 15 “Celebration of Optimism” Gathering. His topic was Pandemics and The Worlds They Create – Too Many To Talk About.
Brungardt told the Optimists that “over time there have been pandemics prior to COVID-19, which began in another part of the world and spread. As early as 430 BCE two-thirds of the population died in Athens, Greece because of a typhoid outbreak. In 541 BCE the Justinian Plague spread in Egypt and Palestine with deaths of 26% of the world’s population. In 1492 disease was spread by Europeans during the Columbian Exchange. The disease was a contributing factor in helping Europe conquer North and South America. In 1889 the Russian Flu contributed to 360,000 Russian deaths and one million deaths worldwide. During the years of 1346 and 1353 The Black Death was spread by fleas and rats in France, Italy, England, and Wales. Disease often spread in seaports and was then brought on land by the sailors and/or passengers.
In 1353, efforts were made to improve public health with the use of quarantines, improvement in sanitation and an increase in governmental involvement in seeking ways to combat disease. There was also a rise in antisemitism.” Mr. Brungardt stated that “the economic effects of disease reduced the work force and laborers were worth more to their employers, which brought about change.
Some historians agree that the Spanish Flu spread from Fort Riley, Kansas in 1918. Government officials were warned not to deploy soldiers from here to fight in WWI, however the warning went unheeded. Six hundred seventy-five thousand people died in the United States from the Spanish Flu. The most recent count of deaths in the U.S. lists about 800,000 deaths from COVID-19.
Now there is the question of what kind of world will COVID -19 create? There are people working from home. In April of 2020, there was an all time high of people resigning from their jobs. In August of the same year the record was broken again.” Tom said “It is not that people are lazy. They may have had experiences in their jobs where the public had repeatedly been rude, and employees were not going to put up with it anymore; the stimulus checks and rent moratorium made it possible for people to leave the jobs they hated and seek something better.”
Tom concluded with an observation that “during COVID-19, some people have indicated by their statements or actions that their job does not (nor will it any longer) describe who they are. He also shared a slide in his power point presentation: “Nothing should go back to “normal”. Normal wasn’t working. If we go back to the way things were, we will have lost the lesson. May we rise up and do better.”