I heard our CEO, Garry Ridge, say this and it struck me as a good, catchy reminder that there is value we can sometimes overlook in challenging times. Every time I hear him say it, I learn something new about how this simple admonition can create huge opportunities.
The first time I heard Garry say these words was in 2009. Many of you will remember that, until this point we are all experiencing now, the Great Recession was the biggest socioeconomic upheaval since the Crash of ’29. Garry led WD-40 Company through and out of that trough with a stronger company, having lost zero people and moving ahead steadily.
The crisis we are in, probably more fearsome than the Great Recession, presents incredible opportunities. I know Garry would agree. But I’m not talking about WD-40 Company (alone). Think about what the COVID19 pandemic is teaching us, at a much lower price than it might be in the future.
This is the first pandemic of global magnitude approaching the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu, and the first such in an era where millions and millions of people move continually across continents in a matter of hours.
We are a populous species. Not as many as insects, and nowhere close to bacteria, but there are a whole lot of us. We are reaching the point where our resource consumption rate is outstripping the ability of our environment to supply it. If we changed our behavior, we could actually support more than the population we have, but it would take coherent action across the world.
In the last few years, coherency has been going backwards. Without voluntary self-regulation by a species, there are four “natural” methods of population correction when its impact on the environment exceeds the supportable limit: catastrophe (e.g. asteroid strike), famine, disease and war. We’re dealing with number three right at the moment.
That’s why this crisis is so very valuable. We have the opportunity to learn from this one, and apply what we’ve learned as a species, to the next pandemic. Which may be a lot deadlier.
COVID19’s final calculated mortality rate will be lower than it is right now. We don’t really know how big the denominator is, so we’re using the subset of confirmed cases. There are many more actual cases than those confirmed, no doubt. Even at these conservatively high mortality rates, the death rate is not as threatening to the species as many other risks we face every day. Not the least of which is ourselves, of course. The panic reaction we’re having is because we didn’t know how bad this was going to be. It’s a brand new bug.
I’m not saying that it’s “okay” that tens of thousands of people will die from COVID19. I’m saying that what we learn from this pandemic could prevent the next contagion’s higher mortality rate. What if COVID19, given its current propagation pace, had a mortality rate of 30%, using the same calculation method we have now. If Governor Newsom is correct that we could see California’s infection rate go to 56%, that would mean about 25 million people infected, and 7.5 million people dead. Just in California. Multiply that around the planet.
What a golden opportunity. To see what we have done right, and what we didn’t. To be honest with ourselves so that we can prevent the catastrophe of the future. And when I say “we”, you know I mean all Earthlings. We Earthlings have to take over from our individualist national leaders who don’t get the big picture. They still think lines on a map exist. Ask the virus what it thinks.