Enlight21

Author: Gladwyn d'Souza | Category: Economics | Environment | Health | Date: 02-18-2022

How would you like to live next to the Wuhan Lab? This is the lab in China, where, according to some, the corona virus originated. Here we’d rate the Wuhan Lab as a Level 4 lab. Labs like Genentech are level 2. Though the number 2 of a level 2 could be the object of study for a level 4. Sewer systems around the country are being tested to illustrate the transmission of the virus according to the New York Times. Now when are scientists going to get their heads out of the toilet? It’s not used for viral transmission right it’s our national repository for classified documents, the basement of the National Archives!

Level 2 labs don’t study anything more infectious than influenza. Remember influenza and the good old days? Level 4 labs study life threatening diseases like EBola, SARs and Covid2. Now how’s that for a neighborhood amenity?

According to the Journal of Atomic Scientists two theories of the Covid -19 virus’ origins exist- one that it escaped from the wild and the other that it escaped from the Wuhan lab where it was being studied. What’s with all these escape stories anyway, it sounds like a Curious George episode that unfortunately left 6M people dead. Both possibilities have solutions. Eliminating deforestations prevents escapes from the wild according to Harvard University. And regulation can contain escapes from the lab according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But these proposals are solutions to distant problems right? After all we are not  the Brazilian rain forest or Wuhan.

So imagine my surprise one evening watching a Redwood City Council meeting and hearing a discussion of pending level 4 labs on Marina Parkway by the Oracle towers. Now you are wondering why Wuhan at Oracle Parkway has me bothered? Well I live walking distance from the Oracle towers. Suddenly Wuhan had moved to Belmont. And the city council was taking a business approach to the lab proposals- Jobs, traffic, and increasing revenue were lighting up their eyes like slot machines.

I kept yelling at the screen, Wuhan, community transmission, leaks, shutdowns, the sky has fallen. You know Bhopal and DuPont. But the Redwood City city council only saw the upside. They were as business friendly as the last administration all the way to the body bags in the mass grave.

The corona virus has brought incredible fortunes to biotech companies. Pfizer for example, reported profits of over $100B, two thirds of which came from Vaccines. Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Astra Zeneca etc. are all reporting record profits according to Bloomberg business news. Naturally our biotech sector around San Francisco Bay has plans to expand to level 4 labs. Companies like Genentech and, Gilled want to get in on what promises to be a robust economic future for vaccines. Wait doesn’t that sound wrong- a robust economic future for vaccines? Scarily these companies are as brave as sharks all looking to expand on the edge of the bay and here I can just leave out all the Fukushima jokes. Because we don’t have tsunamis right? We only have earthquakes, mega wildfires, and extreme heat where the power goes off. Why is the council putting 2 and 2 together and getting 2022?

Redwood City has been catching it’s share of bad news lately. Last month $7M/- in Personal Protective Equipment and cleaning supplies were discovered damaged by the October rains according to the Mercury News. For those of you not from here do you know how long stuff has to sit out in a California drought to get damaged by the rain? Meanwhile many part of California were undergoing shortages with an omicron surge. And the jokes about test kits are still on TV. Recently Jimmy Fallon joked that it was slower to find a text kit at CVS than resolving the Russia Ukraine crisis. Given all these problem I would have asked what the backup and evacuation plans were. But those are not  business friendly questions and the council wouldn’t engage it. In fact they don’t even talk about any contingency plans involving level 4 labs.

What does this all mean for us? Tune into your news source and if you hear of a level 4 lab coming near you, run, far away. No. Email your council and ask them to implement a contingency plan. Because maybe, talking about containing a leak or disaster, will expose the challenges of living next to a Wuhan level 4 lab, right? 

About: Gladwyn d'Souza