This will be a bit of ramble on a Sunday morning.
From www.history.com/…
On the Day of the Dead, it’s believed that the border between the spirit world and the real world dissolve. During this brief period, the souls of the dead awaken and return to the living world to feast, drink, dance and play music with their loved ones. In turn, the living family members treat the deceased as honored guests in their celebrations, and leave the deceased’s favorite foods and other offerings at gravesites...
I was thinking that globally now for 21 months (approximately end January 2020 to now), with approaching 5,000,000 dead (possibly a low number by estimates of deaths that were ‘contributed to by a COVID infection’ in some way), if we lose another 3,000,000 in the next year (based on say about 8,500 people a day dying)...that after only after 32-ish months will be have lost about 0.1% of the just over 7,900,000,000 people on the planet.
As COP26 kicks off today and as we know we are killing the only liveable habitat we have, what if, over the next ten years, we keep losing 3,000,000 people a year to COVID? Not only anti vaxxers will be dying, plenty of others will too. According to the UN projections, about 60,000,000 people will have died in 2021 per ourworldindata.org/… So, countering that with birth numbers reaching in 2021 about 120,000,000 per year...COVID is definitely not killing as many people as a much more virulent/pathogenic plague would. So I am not sure emissions goals, SDGs, etc will be reached as we continue to overpopulate our home.
But COVID illness is straining our hospitals and their staffs, our school systems and their staffs, our economies, and our social/work bonds. It is adding another layer of stress onto our already stressed environment. Certainly, tho it is not making the world less populated as it is not outpacing births. In fact as we saw in lockdowns, it made the environment a tiny bit better.
But really, Day of the Dead/All Souls Day is about honouring the dead. For all of you who have lost a loved family member to COVID or other cause this year, I am sorry. In these past 20 months I know 8 people who have died, and 12 family members had it (none died).
What if we were to honour species, or entire ecosystems that have died on Day of the Dead? By killing them, that was dishonourable, I would say.