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A Pewter Lining
Author: BobR
Date: 04/15/2020 12:56:07
The coronavirus pandemic has completely dominated the news over the last 2 months. Day after day, there's been bad news after bad news. Here at FourFreedomsBlog, we've been writing about it fairly consistently. It's a dark cloud which hangs over us all.
However there are some bright spots too. Not exactly a silver lining - more of a pewter lining. In some small ways, the environment is recovering, and showing us what could happen if mankind shrunk its footprint.
One of the most polluted areas on the planet is China. "Made in China" is seemingly ubiquitous on labels, and their air shows the result of that. However, since the lockdown there brought a lot of traffic and manufacturing to a halt, air quality has improved tremendously.
Another heavily polluted area showing environmental recovery is India. For the 1st time in 30 years, the Himalays are visible to residents in Punjab state:
Here at home, there's a grim reminder of how accustomed we've become to gun violence, that it's quite a shock to find out that this past March was the first one since 2002 without a school shooting. Why? Not because gun violence has in any way subsided - no, it's because kids were home instead of at school.
With these stories (and others, like the canals in Venice clearing up due to lack of boat traffic), one must also be careful about spreading stories which aren't actually true. This would include dolphins swimming in Venice's canals:
(more at the link)
So while the human race continues to fight this illness, Mother Nature appears to be on the mend - at least for now. Enjoy those stories (properly vetted of course) - we all deserve something to feel hopeful about. Also take some solace in the news that - as of this writing - the number of new cases in the U.S. is trending downward:
04/09: 34,393
04/10: 34,227
04/11: 30,107
04/12: 27,512
04/13: 26,526
04/14: 26,889
That's a pewter lining I will take.
However there are some bright spots too. Not exactly a silver lining - more of a pewter lining. In some small ways, the environment is recovering, and showing us what could happen if mankind shrunk its footprint.
One of the most polluted areas on the planet is China. "Made in China" is seemingly ubiquitous on labels, and their air shows the result of that. However, since the lockdown there brought a lot of traffic and manufacturing to a halt, air quality has improved tremendously.
Another heavily polluted area showing environmental recovery is India. For the 1st time in 30 years, the Himalays are visible to residents in Punjab state:
Residents in the northern Indian state of Punjab say they're seeing the Himalayas for the first time in decades while on coronavirus lockdown.
Since India was put on lockdown in March to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, the country's air quality has seen immense improvement.
The air quality has increased because public transportation has stopped, fewer people are driving, and there's less air traffic in the skies.
Here at home, there's a grim reminder of how accustomed we've become to gun violence, that it's quite a shock to find out that this past March was the first one since 2002 without a school shooting. Why? Not because gun violence has in any way subsided - no, it's because kids were home instead of at school.
With these stories (and others, like the canals in Venice clearing up due to lack of boat traffic), one must also be careful about spreading stories which aren't actually true. This would include dolphins swimming in Venice's canals:
SCATTERED AMID A relentless barrage of news about COVID-19 case surges, quarantine orders, and medical supply shortages on Twitter this week, some happy stories softened the blows: Swans had returned to deserted Venetian canals. Dolphins too. And a group of elephants had sauntered through a village in Yunnan, China, gotten drunk off corn wine, and passed out in a tea garden.
These reports of wildlife triumphs in countries hard-hit by the novel coronavirus got hundreds of thousands of retweets. They went viral on Instagram and Tik Tok. They made news headlines. If there’s a silver lining of the pandemic, people said, this was it—animals were bouncing back, running free in a humanless world.
But it wasn’t real...
So while the human race continues to fight this illness, Mother Nature appears to be on the mend - at least for now. Enjoy those stories (properly vetted of course) - we all deserve something to feel hopeful about. Also take some solace in the news that - as of this writing - the number of new cases in the U.S. is trending downward:
04/09: 34,393
04/10: 34,227
04/11: 30,107
04/12: 27,512
04/13: 26,526
04/14: 26,889
That's a pewter lining I will take.
