Historical change is generated through crises.

And clearly we are facing one now.

But as General Stonewall Jackson put it: “Never take counsel of your fears.”

Clearly, it is not being governed by our fears that we will do the kind of resiliency reset we need to address and to set in motion an approach which can allow for the liberal democracies to deal with realities which they have clearly not wanted to address.

Our colleague, John Blackburn and his team, have been highlighting for years the need to face the downside of globalization and to rebuild our supply chains and to shape more resilient societies, notably when dealing with the 21st century authoritarians who are working the global disinformation game to further sow disunity in our midst.

The challenge is clear — get real and make significant change.

According to Blackburn:

No one could have anticipated this” – Absolute Rubbish.

I listened to the Services Australia bureaucrat on the ABC this morning say just that in response to the dismal performance of the Centrelink system.

It is time that we stop hiding behind such statements and admit that, as a society, we have been complacent to the significant changes in the world and our lack of resilience.

It is not as if the issues have not been raised. Bill Gates has been loudly stating the issue of pandemics for years and has been largely disregarded.

A multitude of think tanks and commentators have raised issues regarding a range of risks, only to be dismissed as irritants by politicans.

In my supply chain risk and resilience work I have been dismissed by Ministers from both sides of politics; a Labor Minister once told me to go away and focus on “defence issues” and a current serving Liberal Minister told me that my concerns were not valid and that the “market” could address any issues that arose.

Clearly the market cannot address the range of issue that we are facing now.

So stop the excuses, accept we have stuffed up and get on with addressing the crisis of our own making. After the crisis, we need to have a very difficult conversation in this country.

We will have to face reality.

He posted this on LinkedIn and two comments posted in response to his comment further underscore the challenge.

The first underscores the reality check and its significance.

I think you would agree that a lot of people have found it hard to imagine this would be our reality, others have seen it coming for a long time.

I’ve learnt over the years that its not until a lot of people can touch, feel, live the experience are they able to process the reality of it.

This is definitely a time when a fair percentage of the population is beginning to ‘get it’ – let’s try to help them see the bigger picture now we’ve got their attention. 

The way they think, plan and act is now no longer sufficient and they’re finding out the hard way.

Your expertise in this area is invaluable and it would be great to turn all our attention to how we can learn from you (and others) and be able to process what’s happening so we make better decisions from here on. 

Let’s turn the negative into the positive. 

What do you say, shall we have a go?

The second highlighted the impact of reality shock

John, couldn’t agree more.

Our society has been very complacent with our political leaders not understanding and not willing to understand the sovereign risk they faced.

The COVID-19 outcome is the classic result of putting something off and hoping it won’t happen on my watch – except…it did.

It is not a response based on our fears that will allow for the policy challenges we need to be met to indeed be met.

It is by addressing issues which have been percolating for years that simply have not been mainstream ones but now they are.

By Kenneth Maxwell

I am quarantined on my hill in Devon.

The British Media had been celebrating the “Dunkirk” spirit.

The British Prime Minister, the old Etonian, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, better know as as “Boris” or “BoJo” is the author of a book on Winston Churchill. He likes to think of himself as a Churchill Resurrected.

He has always wanted to be the prime minister.

Over the past fortnight he has been holding reassuring daily briefings in 10 Downing Street often flanked by the chief medical and the chief scientist officer, on the unfolding coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis over a lecturn emblazoned with the slogan “Save the NHS.”

Yet as Italy became the coronavirus global hot spot and Spain followed and France enacted draconian measures to contain the coronavirus, Britain remained an outlier, safe it seemed in a BREXIT inspired off-shore island, splendidly isolated from Europe and from the World.

In Shakespeare’s words: “This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war.” But on Monday 23 March “Britain Alone” was not enough. Boris Johnson has belatedly decreed a national “stay at home” policy and introduced tough new restrictions on daily life.

It is some irony in a British conservative prime minister is acting now to save the NHS and with it begin a desperate and belated attempt to contain the coronavirus epidemic.

The British National Health Service (NHS) was established after WW2 by the post-war Labour government. Winston Churchill and the Consevative Party had been roundly rejected by the British electorate in the general election of 1945. Churchill has called the election when opinion polls had showed him receiving strong approval. He was basking in the euphoria of victory in Europe. But in the general election in July 1945 the Labour Party under Clement Attlee won an overwhelming victory which was based in large part on their social policy proposals, and in particular on their policies on theIr proposals for public health.

As the leader of “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” (King George VI was then the British Monarch) Winston Churchill and the Conservative party opposed the legislation establishing the the NHS (the Tories voted against it 21 times). The British Medical Association was also ferociously hostile. Churchill, always a man with the ability to mobilize words had called the Labour Party “some form of gestapo.”

Boris Johnson is better known for his florid hair than for his rhetorical skills though he is not far behind Churchill (or Trump) in his capacity to invent and hurl rhetorical insults.

The diligence, persistence, and the passion of the Labour party’s Health Minister, Aneurin Bevan, got a universal free at the point of service national health care system funded by general taxation established throughout the United Kingdom between 1946 and 1948  The NHS has long since become a much beloved and totemic British national institution (though it was scandalously underfunded by conservative led governments over the past decade).

Yet one thing is now absolutely certain. Boris Johnson and the NHS is about to be tested as never before by the Coronavirus epidemic which is about to hit Britain with the force of a hurricane.

And on the scale which has already hit Italy and Spain.

Hence my preemptive quarantine on my hill in Devon.

The Dunkirk “spirit” saw hundred of small boats put out to sea to pluck 340,000 allied soldiers from the sandy beaches of northern France close to the border with Belgium. In 2020 the British are showing a much less than doughty spirit. They are impatiently waiting congregated in huge lines to strip the supermarket shelfs of toilet rolls and pasta.

Although pubs and restaurants were closed down on Friday night, City parks, rural tourist beauty spots and beaches, from Cornwall to Snowdonia, were packed with visitors over the warm spring weekend.

And on Monday the London underground was crowded with jam packed commuters. Few it seems we’re taking any notice of Boris Johnson’s confusing advise to “stay at home” and to “social distance.”

In the face of the impending plague we were for too long much less in the “Age of Dunkirk” than in the epoch of “Phoney War” the eight month period from October 1939 until March 1940 at the start of WW2 when following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, only limited military action took place.

People went on then as they did now behaving as if nothing was happening.

But national health staff were and are still crying out in desperation for wider coronavirus testing and above all for protective equipment (PPE) for the professionals tending to coronavirus victims, and for the desperately needed increased supply of ventilators in the face of chronic shortages.

Eventually and belatedly Boris Johnson got the message and decreed a national shut down on Monday evening 23 March.

”You must stay at home” he said in a national televised address. We are clearly in for difficult days ahead. Many war time restrictions are likely to reappear. We are told that food supplies are not under threat though the impatient and angry crowds outside supermarkets in recent days clearly do not believe it.

Boris Johnson much like President Donald Trump has a mighty deficit of trust to overcome.

His “stay at home” decree brought back memories of the age rationing which persisted in Britain until 1954. I remember going to the “tuck shop” at my boarding school as a ten-year old with my ration coupon a slip I got up once a week for the dry surgery mixture we could buy (sugar was rationed until 1954) as a substitute for “sweets.”

And the mad rush at the British supermarkets to buy toilet paper reminded me of the neatly cut and sting suspended small rectangular cut wads of old newspapers in the school “bogs” (our term for the school’s outside toilets) which we used to wipe our bottoms.

At least this will not be store for the bottoms of today since the Internet has virtually wiped out the age of newsprint.

But be prepared.

From my hilltop in Devon l am anticipating dark days ahead.

This is the first in our occasional series of reactions and reflections on the state and dynamics of the global management of today’s plague.

The featured photo was taken from the following source:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7955757/Bournemouth-hierarchy-ridiculed-wearing-club-branded-coronavirus-face-masks.html

By Pierre Tran

Paris – The French navy sailed a helicopter carrier to the Mediterranean island of Corsica to pick up patients hit by the coronavirus infection, the armed forces ministry said March 22.

Florence Parly tweeted the arrival today of Thunder, a Mistral class helicopter carrier, at the port of Ajaccio, on the west coast of Corsica, known as the island of beauty.

“Solidarity with our medical staff,” she said.

“The services are there to protect the French.”

Parly thanked the sailors and the medical wing of the armed forces who conducted the evacuation.

Two ambulances drove on board the helicopter carrier, which had sailed from Toulon, the key naval base on the southern coast, the armed forces ministry said.

A medical team of military and civilian specialists sailed to receive the patients, who were placed in strict confinement.

The patients will be transferred to hospitals in the south of France.

The maritime mission was called to lighten the hospitals on Corsica, which had registered164 cases and seven fatalities due to coronavirus by March 19, said the local health authority, BFM TV reported.

The Mistral class is equipped with an onboard hospital, with two operating theaters and 69 beds, which can be extended. A 200-strong crew sails the warship.

The navy sailed Thunder on a humanitarian mission to the French Caribbean in 2017, when the islands of Saint Martin and Saint Bartholomew were hit by hurricane Irma. Last year, the helicopter ship diverted from the annual Joan of Arc naval mission to sail to Mozambique, after cyclone Idai  hit southern Africa.

The two other Mistral class ships, Mistral and Dixmude, are sailing in the Indian Ocean and western Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, on March 21st, the French Air Force flew a second flight of the A330 MRTT equipped with the Morpheus flying hospital unit, flying six patients to Bordeaux from Mulhouse.

The first medical flight of the A330 MRTT took place two days before, flying six patients from Mulhouse to Istres airbase, south of France.

The French air force has added a second Falcon jet to its medical evacuation flight, which now comprises six pilots and two cabin teams, a Falcon 2000LX and Falcon 900, the service said. The transport squadron flies that emergency service.

The airborne medical squadron has been stood up in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Those flight crews are trained to fly in conditions of nuclear, bacteriological, chemical and radioactive warfare, with the staff wearing protective gear and the aircraft disinfected. The pilots can fly with protective masks and gloves.

A crew from that squadron flew March 18 the A330 MRTT which brought six patients from Mulhouse, eastern France, to the south of the country

Parly visited March 18 Villacoublay airbase, just outside the capital, and met crews of the two specialist units. Parly said the services would support the national effort, especially the air force and its medical evacuation capability.

The army is setting up tents for its field hospital in the car park of the public hospital in Mulhouse.

That field hospital, equipped with 30 beds for intensive care, is intended to take some of the pressure off the staff in the general hospital, which is struggling to cope with the intake of stricken patients.

Specialists in the Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office are testing safety masks proposed by companies, with some 700 samples received for tests. Results of tests are expected in the next few days, the ministry said.

The defense innovation agency has set a €10 million budget for a tender for projects to fight the pandemic, looking for ways to protect and test the population, track the course of illness in a patient, or how to limit the constraints during the health crisis, the ministry said.

The ministry has stood up five of the eight military hospitals around the country, with some 100 beds in each hospital set aside for patients with coronavirus, of which 40 are for severe cases. The ministry closed the noted Val de Grâce hospital in the capital in 2016.

The number of fatalities in France rose almost 20 percent to 562 over Friday and Saturday, with 6,172 in hospital, of which 1,525 are in intensive care, Le Monde afternoon daily reported March 22.

The first hospital doctor in France has died while treating coronavirus.

“This is a war, it will last,” president Emmanuel Macron said in Journal de Dimanche, a Sunday paper.

There was need to protect the most vulnerable and the health system, as well as control the stress on society, he said.

There was also need to tackle an unprecedented financial crisis and crisis in the underlying economy.

Featured Photo: Hospital facilities aboard Mistral-class LHD Tonnerre. File picture: ©Emmanuelle Mocquillon/Marine Nationale/Défense

By Pierre Tran

Paris – On March 18, 2020, the French air force flew six civilian patients severely hit by the deadly coronavirus in an A330 MRTT military transport jet fitted out with an onboard medical evacuation unit, the armed forces ministry said.

That was the first time the service flew its airborne hospital unit, dubbed Morpheus, in a domestic flight as the module was used to fly wounded personnel to France from distant overseas deployments.

The modular units, previously fitted on the C-135, can be equipped for intensive care as well as lighter medical conditions.

The A330 multirole tanker transport aircraft flew from Mulhouse, eastern France, and landed at Istres airbase in the south, allowing the patients to be transferred to military hospitals in Marseille and Toulon, the ministry said.

The military flight was ordered to lighten the load on hospitals in eastern France, one of the hardest hit regions, with the public health authority registering March 17 1,820 cases of coronavirus in that part of the country.

In other medical moves, armed forces minister Florence Parly told Le Parisien daily the ministry found it had five million surgical masks and was delivering them to the ministry of health and social affairs.

There has been widespread concern in the medical profession over the lack of masks, leaving the staff vulnerable to the superbug.

The ministry has also arranged for a mobile military hospital to be set up in the Alsace northeastern region.

Those limited military operations were in stark contrast to a rush of rumors and fake news stories on social media which fuelled talk of army deployment to enforce a national curfew.

A curfew has not been ordered.

Photos circulated on social media of armored vehicles on the motorway and in suburbs, with talk these would be used in the curfew.

Those photos dated from earlier times or were on routine movement.

Such was the spread of falsehoods, the armed forces junior minister, Genevieve Darrieussecq, tweeted “Stop Fake News,” saying the services would not intervene in  the lock down and they were playing their part in a national effort against the epidemic.

The ministry’s website denied point by point the talk of the military taking on a greater role in the lock down.

French president Emmanuel Macron said March 16 in a live speech broadcast to the nation there would be a national lock down as of midday the next day. That restrictive measure required people to stay indoors unless going to work, had emergency needs or carried an obligatory travel document.

Some 100,000 police were mobilized to enforce the lock down, and would accept press cards in place of the travel document, the interior minister said March 16. The document can be downloaded from the internet or written out by hand.

Those breaching the lock down must pay hefty fines.

French hospitals had admitted March 18 3,626 patients, of which 931 were in intensive care, afternoon daily Le Monde reported.

The virus had claimed 264 lives, an increase of 89 deaths within 24 hours.

About half the patients with serious cases were under 60.

Featured Photo: The Morphée kit on the Airbus A330 MRTT is designed for the intensive care of up to 12 patients. Source: French Air Force