Emergenency! Look, lots and lots and lots of emergencies. Here’s a starter list

January 6, 2022

As the world’s leaders evolve from economic and social planners to a new normal of policy on the go because science, I stopped to research how many emergencies we’re living under.

I had thirst emergency a moment ago, along with a sleep emergency, and solved them both with a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately (or not if you like adrenalin) societal emergencies can’t be solved quite so fast.

Let’s start with Colorado. The governor declared a state of emergency because of deadly fires burning through homes fanned by hurricane force winds. That’s what’s actually called an emergency. It’s immediate. It’s life threatening. It requires a rapid response.

Today’s definition of “State of Emergency” in Wikipedia is

A situation in which a government is empowered to be able to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens.

Wikipedia

Sounds good. Let’s check out the rest.

Internal conflict

Fair enough. Civil war is by definition a state of emergency, in that a new state may emerge.

Kazakhstan has one right now

Racism

Racism is one of the many tribal prejudices mankind has held since the beginning of time. Even though the US constitution was amended with bill of rights which makes making decisions based on race largely illegal…

New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared Racism a “Public Health Emergency.” To combat racism, police need to gather detailed race data on crime victims and all state government websites need to incorporate technology that allows the website to be translated into the most common languages (languages of color?). In other words, the police need to collect more data to show what we already know, and all pages need a google translate icon. New York joins four other states:

Minnesota, Virginia, Hawaii, and DC have all declared Racism an emergency

Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, became the first community to declare racism a public health crisis in 2018, since then, over 200 states, councils, health associations etc have declared racism to be a public health crisis or emergency.

Because without declaring an emergency the local authorities would be blocked from passing legislation guaranteeing the equality already guaranteed under the constitution?

In April last year, the CDC declared racism a public health threat and described it as an epidemic. The Center for Disease Control?

Let’s move on to a real emergency. Something that needs your immediate attention today…

Climate Change

You knew this was coming. We’re living in a climate emergency. All those bodies piling up on the pavement from the pandemic could actually be from Climate Change. They are both emergencies you know.

I’m writing from Bangkok, which is now submerged under three feet of water according to 1990 projections. As I swim across the road to 7/11, I do wonder why Thailand hasn’t joined the rest of the world in declaring a Climate Emergency.

Sixteen countries plus the EU have declared a “Climate Emergency.” Given that that the climate and sea levels can take upwards of 2,000 years to respond to our emergency efforts, this emergency may outlast the declarations, of which there are many.

Pope Francis declared a climate emergency in June 2019. If it didn’t have religious overtones before…

In November 2019, 11,000 scientists from 153 nations signed an article stating that, “We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency” and that the world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society. Can’t disagree. Any suffering due to the “climate crisis” remains untold. Possibly even unsuffered.

Shockingly, the Australian Medical Association declared climate change a public health crisis back in 2013. Nobody has died from it yet though, so I guess we’re doing a good job of managing this particular crisis.

There are now 2054 Climate Emergency Declarations covering a billion people. Somehow most of the world has avoided living in a climate emergency. Lucky us.

Covid

Of course it’s an emergency. But it took a while for some places to get the memo.

Yesterday, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and called out the national guard. I couldn’t believe it. It took this long? But with armed soldiers, Omicron will be quivering in its boots.

In January last year, several months into the crisis, Sweden’s new government declared an emergency and pushed through the emergency laws that had been missing since the start of the pandemic. Because Sweden was late to declare an emergency the population wasn’t locked down and suffered as many deaths as countries that declared an emergency and went into lockdown. If you have dramatic music in the background, that can sound like a logical reason for the state of emergency.

Haiti declared a State of Emergency in May 2021 under intense international pressure. However, it was too little too late for President Moise, who was assassinated by mercenaries in July, triggering a second State of Emergency, during which the country experienced massive earthquakes, resulting in a third State of Emergency.

Greece, the origin of democracy, bypassed its constitution to introduce a backdoor State of Emergency declaration. The problem was that the only provision for a declaration of emergency under Article 48 of the constitution required a “state of siege.” It seems that democracy used to trump viruses. Now government edicts can fight viruses. We’ve come a long way in 2,000 years.

Every other country has done something equally absurd here.

Spirit

In 2018, Pope Francis sent a letter to Chile apologizing for the sex abuse by Catholic priests, which the Vatican declared was a “Spiritual Emergency.” This we can get on board with. A habit of falling over naked on minors is definitely a spiritual emergency, or maybe just a history of sex crimes.

Immigration

Donald Trump declared a State of emergency to divert military funding to build his border wall. It wasn’t much of an emergency at the time. Now that a million illegals are crossing the border each year, it’s isn’t an emergency at all. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand emergencies.

Poland did the same, declaring a State of Emergency last year to stop the flow of humanity dumped on its borders by Belarus.

In September 2020, Greece declared a State of Emergency of the Moria migrant camp fire. I’m not sure how this needed a state of emergency declaration. It meant that several thousand people without food and shelter no longer had food and shelter. It’s not like there was a balrog in their midst.

Privacy

Absolutely. Governments have to know who is using the bathroom. If not, it’s an emergency.

In 1988, Australia wrote the Privacy Act 1988 into law which guaranteed individual privacy. Then in 2020 there were lots of bushfires and the government decided it needed the right to know everything about you. You know, because of fire. So it introduced, I kid you not, the “Privacy (Australian Bushfires Disaster) Emergency Declaration (No. 1) 2020.”

This declaration ran for a year, and gave the government carte blanche to totally ignore Australians’ privacy rights despite the fires being contained by March. In theory, this only applied to Australians who were directly or indirectly affected by the fires. However, the government estimated that around 80% of Australians had been affected by the fires, so you were included in that. If not, you may have noticed the “(No. 1)” there. Looks like there will be plenty to come.

Gun violence

Being shot is a medical emergency. Being shot at regularly, is apparently a disaster emergency. At least according to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo who declared a Disaster Emergency over gun violence in July last year. This meant he could increase funding and hire more police, to replace the billion bucks stripped from the budget the previous year under the “defund the police” fad. Policy on the go baby.

Nuclear radiation

Following a total meltdown of the core at the Chernobyl nuclear rector in April 1986, the Soviet government immediately declared an emergency and evacuated all nearby cities within a week.

Just kidding. There was no Declaration of Emergency at Chernobyl.

It took months for the government to finally admit that the leak, which set of radiation alarms in Sweden before being announced in the USSR, had made several cities unlivable and eventually suggested the residents may like to evacuate.

In March 1979, TMI-2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant (now owned by Exelon) had a partial meltdown and spewed a moderate amount of nuclear waste into the atmosphere. A general site emergency was declared at the plant, but Pennsylvania didn’t get around to declaring a State of emergency following the Three Mile Island incident. They did, however, begin evacuating people after two days.

On 11 March 2011, an earthquake and subsequent Tsunami shook TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The government immediately declared a State of Emergency and evacuated everyone within a 3km radius as a “precaution.” The company admitted that coolant levels were falling in the plant, which by definition means there’s a serious radiation leak and imminent meltdown. Then Tepco and the Japanese government went into denial mode for several months. And years.

Ironically, Japan has declared a Climate Emergency, because carbon is bad, but the plan to dump 1.2 million tons of nuclear waste in the ocian is perfectly ok. 

Terrorism

This is an old favorite. Possibly the most famous one is the burning of the Reichstag.

On 27 February, 1933 — just a month after Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor, a fire broke out in Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag.

Hitler convinced the German President to sign a Declaration of Emergency giving the Reich cabinet limitless power, suspended habeas corpus, ended the inviolability of the residence, ended freedom of expression and association, and gave the state the right to access the post and tap telephones. Within months, the only political force in Germany was Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party. Over the next six years Germany annexed the Czech Republic, invaded Poland, and placed millions of political opponents, gypsies, and Jews into concentration camps before precipitating war with the invasion of Belgium. Sound familiar? It should.

On September 11, 2001, three of New York’s World Trade Center towers collapsed after two planes crashed into them. Three days later, President George W Bush declared a State of Emergency that would last one year. It was extended.

Within two years, the US had already started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wide ranging powers of this state of emergency have proven to be a bit difficult for the president to give up. This State of Emergency has enabled the US to engage in 11 wars so far, without the need for the usual declaration of war by Congress.

On September 9 2021, President Joe Biden extended the above State of Emergency for the 20th time, becoming the fourth president to do so.

In 2015-2016 an attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and subsequent Islamic terrorist attacks in France precipitated a two year State of Emergency. By the time the State of Emergency ended, the French government had written so many news overreaching laws onto its books that it didn’t really need the State of Emergency any more. Although France didn’t invade any countries, it did succeed in banning the Burkini.

Sexual abuse

If you thought this was going to look at the Catholic Church, I’m afraid you are mistaken. That’s a spiritual emergency only.

The sex emergency I ran across was the 2007 “National Emergency Response to Protect Aboriginal Children in the Northern Territory from Sexual Abuse and Family Violence.”

It’s always about the children. And racial discrimination. Specifically, this emergency declaration suspended the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

Even though this emergency ended in 2010, new laws enacted prior to the ending of the emergency ensured that racial discrimination remains legal to this day.

Australian governments are always looking out for the natives and it’s probably not racist. Well, maybe a little bit, but the intentions are good right? I mean, what do aborigines know about Covid? Nothing? What do we know? Almost nothing. So we need to help them by forcing them into quarantine camps. After all, racism is legal in Australia if you are purportedly helping someone.

State of Emergency: The game

There’s a popular board game called Pandemic. But until now it’s been totally unrealistic. In earlier versions, players were allowed to consider natural immunity and were encouraged to find treatments. Absurd.

In the third expansion, State of Emergency, the game is now totally realistic. Players do NOT search for cures. They have to cooperate to develop unsafe vaccines and conduct stage II/III trials on entire populations. It looks like it will finally be ready to use as a learning tool in public health settings.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the correlation between emergencies and declared states of emergency, if there is one. It seems to me a bit like politicians and bureaucrats building their power base with these things. Or maybe that was Hitler and the rest of the world is benign.

I’ll be traveling soon, and as we all know in an emergency, travel means no liquids, no sharp objects, and two needles in the arm.

I received my second dose of a dead virus today. One of the side effects is that I may lose my sense of taste. I doubt anyone would notice, even in an emergency.

Cheers,

Peter.