If ever there was a year to not have any new year resolutions, this is the one.

After what had to be the worst year that I can remember, I will be glad to see an end to 2020. Absolutely everything was disrupted.

But…

The panacea that governments are touting, the COVID 19 vaccine, will not stretch to every corner of the earth, nor be available for everyone in the short term (we in Australia won’t get it until March or April) and it will be the same for nearly every country that isn’t the US, Russia and China.

By the end of next year, of course, we will know whether the vaccine will be once a year, who can’t have it, who won’t have it, and how many people will have had an adverse reaction to it. Then there’s the question of whether it stops you from getting COVID, and whether COVID can still kill you even after being vaccinated.

The problem is, 2021 is going to be a watershed year for the vaccine. Will it eradicate the virus, or will it just make the virus more resilient, or will it mutate into a version the vaccine can’t stop. Nobody knows the answers to these questions because there hasn’t been enough time to study the virus, or the vaccines because like it or not, they really do take five years to discover their effectiveness.

In that case, if I was going to make a resolution it would be to stay away from the virus and be alive in 2022.

That, of course, is impossible. There are too many selfish and inconsiderate people out there who don’t care if they get it it, and then if they pass it on. Anything to avoid being inconvenienced. So what if a few old people die, or sick people die. Less of a drain on the economy because they don’t really contribute anything, do they?

It could be argued that whoever invented this virus intended it for old and sick people because of the burden they place on the welfare system. Otherwise why would it not be so devastating for those under 50 typically most of the productive members of the workforce, nor the young who need to take their place. It is said that we may never get rid of COVID so will it be a cycle that will mean some time in the future that people will not live beyond the age of, say, 60, by design?

Has someone arbitrarily decided that there are too many people on the planet and it’s time to start culling the population? A pandemic that removes about 1 billion people would make things more sustainable.

It’s a terrifying thought. It’s the stuff of science fiction, but the problem with that it, life eventually imitates art, and what has been dreamed up on television or in the movies, eventually happens in reality.

Think about Logan’s Run. Was this the forerunner of what life will be like on this planet?

There were films about space travel in the 50’s. That became a reality in the 70’s.

Pandemic type films like Outbreak and Contagion showed the problems and possible resolutions, and yes, it eventually happened almost exactly as the latter film showed us.

It was strange to discover that everyone knew a pandemic was possible, knew what was supposed to be done, just in case, and then when it hit, no one had any idea of what to do. Will we have learned from this crisis?

I doubt it.

The biggest problem with a crisis of global magnitude is people. Half the world are constantly told lies, and the other half do not want to be told the truth.

If anything is going to destroy this world, it will not be nuclear radiation or global warfare, but a simple unkillable bug that will, if we let it though ignorance and stupidity, kill us all.

After all, there’s been a few movies that have prophesised exactly that.