Pandemic Perspective

This is easily one of the most meaningful pieces I’ve read yet during this Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Maybe we don't have it that bad?

It’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria. For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.

On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million. v On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.

When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII.

Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.

Smallpox was epidemic until you were in your 40’s, as it killed 300 million people during your lifetime.

At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish. From your birth, until you were 55, you dealt with the fear of polio epidemics each summer. You experience friends and family contracting polio and being paralyzed and/or dying.

At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. During the Cold War, you lived each day with the fear of nuclear annihilation. On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, almost ended. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.

Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How did they endure all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art. Refined and enlightening as time goes on. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Your parents and/or grandparents were called to endure all of the above – we are called to stay home and sit on our couch.

The Green Beret Training Pipeline Continues Amidst COVID-19

Training for roughly 2,500 students in the Army’s special operations pipelines is not stopping for the coronavirus pandemic, said JFK Special Warfare Center and School commander Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson. Green Beret, civil affairs and psychological operations training courses have continued, though Army Special Operations Command has shut down some advanced training, to include shooting courses and the combat diver course, Roberson said during a livestreamed town hall Thursday.

A Special Forces selection class slated to start in April was cancelled due to the Pentagon’s travel ban, but SWCS is planning to run another selection class in May, Roberson added. The next Robin Sage exercise, the training program’s culminating event, is still scheduled to start in roughly six weeks, with soldiers currently working through the phases leading up to it. But not all are happy with the decision to continue. Roberson read a question submitted during the town hall that asked why SWCS is “choosing to endanger students, cadre and their families” by training in the "middle of a quarantine period.”

Roberson responded that SWCS’ training programs have been deemed “mission critical," pointing to the Army’s need for an uninterrupted stream of new special operations soldiers. “We don’t want to start from a cold start, getting our production line back up,” he said. “Now, again, we’re mitigating risk as best we can. As of right now, no one in the SWCS enterprise has tested positive for COVID and we’re testing as often as we can.”

Army basic training recently entered a two-week pause before shipping any more new recruits, giving hotspots where military entrance processing stations are located a chance to tamp down on the pandemic. However, basic training classes are different in that they’re taking new recruits from the civilian population, according to the SWCS leader. “We’re actually working with clean populations for the most part. The people we’re taking have been in the Army,” Roberson said. “As of right now we haven’t had anybody who has really been off of Fort Bragg since this started, [who] we’re training.”

Article from the Army Times