COVID-19: A Wildfire Pandemic Starting Again

This is a worldwide issue as people move indoors during the fall and winter.

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In watching the news each day one can see there is an increase of coronavirus cases around the world. European countries are once again going through the process of shutting down portions of their economy in order to hopefully contain the spread of the virus. Germany was just in the news today. Italy has had protests about the extent of the shutdown.

With true wildfires, the accelerant typically comes from drought conditions and then with a "spark," and what really blows up the fire is high winds. California had this situation just yesterday with winds over 100 MPH which grounded all aircraft fighting the fires. 

Here in the United States, COVID-19 has rotated through different geographical regions of the nation. Last spring it was New York and New Jersey that were in the crosshairs of the virus. All states have had their turn in the bucket, most recently with the more rural states in the West who thought they were immune due to the low density of their populations. That assumption has definitely been proven wrong. 

Further impacting these rural states is the fact that they have many fewer medical resources to deal with the increase in cases and then subsequent hospitalizations. Many hospitals in this Western zone are now maxed out and deferring patients to other regions of the state, and even across boundaries to neighboring states. 

If it is winds that feed the wildfires, it is the personal one-on-one contact of families meeting over the holidays that will blow up the coronavirus to new heights. The other threat still pending and ready to descend on the United States is what impact the flu season will have on our medical systems. If it is a bad flu season, that can come way before we have a vaccine, it could be a real donnybrook of an event that swoops down on all of us and creates a dual medical crisis of major proportions. 

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Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.