I refuse to read books, articles or news stories (or listen to podcasts) asking, “Are we prepared for tenet pandemic?”
The answer is always – no.
Then the expert goes into detail about our lack of investment, investigation and public health policies. They highlight how we messed up during the Covid pandemic, how certain Asian countries like Japan and Korea always handle pandemics better and how our factory food system creates an environment where bird flu could spread rapidly, jump species and mutate into something deadly for humanity.
I can’t do anything about any of this.
I can’t address the shortfalls. I can’t stockpile sufficient medicines or supplies that will mitigate the societal effects of a pandemic. I can’t change government policies.
The best I can do is have a few weeks supply of food, water and essentials to weather a short term interruption. Beyond that, I’ll have to deal with a pandemic like humans have always done – live with it, deal with it and possible die from it.
The same goes for alien invasions, climate change, huge meteor strikes, nuclear war and other large scale dystopian disasters.
I have an active enough imagination and a catastrophic outlook on life that I already have plenty of fuel for nightmares. I don’t need any more.
For this same reason, I stopped listening to news stories about the Israel/Palestine war, the Ukraine/Russia war and various conflicts in African nations. The horrors and tragedies are real. Just as my inability to anything about them is too.
My worrying about them doesn’t do a bit of good.