Yesterday was International Health Day. Never has this phrase sounded louder in our eardrums than in 2020, as we are currently in the middle of a global pandemic, in which 78313 have been claimed by the corona virus and its associated COVID19 illness (number to date). This is 5.75% of the total number of cases reported (1,362,201 currently) and we have seen that the effects on individuals vary tremendously based on different factors, such as the existence of underlying conditions, age, on exposure to pollution and on lifestyle.<\/p>\n
The absence of a clear treatment and a vaccine to this illness and respectively virus, the numbers we are looking at are numbers which talk about the resilience of individuals. However, this resilience is affected by local conditions (health systems, density, ability to self-isolate, etc.), broader amplifiers (environmental and societal conditions which can be labeled as threats in the context of a health crisis, including poverty related diseases) and multipliers (transmitability rate, extreme weather events forcing population responses, mobility etc.).<\/p>\n
Climate change and environmental degradation both emerge from this situation as affecting resilience across all the three categories. In a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum, we see that the risk profile for the next 10 years assesses infectious diseases as one of the top 10 risks in terms of impact, but really all the other climate and environmental risks bigger in impact because of their multiplying effect on the other ones.<\/p>\n
Less than a year ago the TIME magazine called\u00a0climate change a public health issue<\/a>\u00a0because it is a\u00a0 \u201cthreat multiplier\u201d. The same article goes to further quote the US Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, by a collaboration among 13 U.S. scientific agencies, which highlighted that \u201chigher temperatures, severe weather events and rising seas can contribute to heat-related cardiopulmonary illness, infectious disease and mental-health issues\u201d.<\/p>\n Looking at this article from September 2019 through the lens of the corona virus pandemic, we understand that any environmental factor which amplifies cardiopulmonary illness can be seen as an amplifier of COVID19 and therefore one of the factors lowering the resilience of individuals in the face of this crisis.<\/p>\n Secondly, in Europe, the climate policy think tank Sandbag <\/a>, together with the BeyondCoal<\/a>\u00a0campaign published a report called \u201cThe Last Gasp\u201d brought to attention the number of pre-mature deaths caused from air pollution from the coal plants.\u00a0 The companies looked at caused a modeled 7,600 premature deaths, 3,320 new cases of chronic bronchitis and 137,000 asthma symptom days in children in 2016. According to this study, entitled \u201cThe Last Gasp Report<\/a>\u201d, this lead to an estimated 5,820 hospital admissions and over two million lost working days already in 2016.<\/p>\n If we add the number of asthma caused\/year across the EU countries and look at the resilience issue, we see that in fact by not protecting the EU citizens from the air pollution from these plants, Governments have in fact endangered their own and each other\u2019s populations to shocks such as the Covid19 respiratory illness.<\/p>\n