(OPINION) Michael Snyder – It has just been one thing after another in 2020. First, the COVID-19 pandemic erupted and quickly spread all over the globe. At this point, more than 800,000 people have died globally, and authorities are warning us to brace ourselves for another wave of the pandemic in the fall.
Of course many would argue that fear of the virus has been even worse than the disease itself, and it is undeniable that the COVID-19 shutdowns were the primary reason why we have plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
More than 57 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits so far this year, and that number just keeps rising with each passing week. On top of all that, the tragic death of George Floyd caused an unprecedented wave of civil unrest to erupt in major cities all across America, and many are anticipating a fresh outburst of unrest as we head toward election day in November.
So coming into this month we had already faced far more trouble than we do in a typical year, and now a very strange series of natural disasters is making things even worse. For example, earlier this month an absolutely massive storm known as a “derecho” with winds of up to 112 mph came roaring through the Midwest.
Millions upon millions of acres of crops were destroyed, and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has described this storm as a “40-mile-wide tornado that went through the state of Iowa”… The damage was so bad that the New York Times reported that Iowa state officials estimate that at least 14 million acres of necessary farmland were damaged by the storm.
Not only were crops destroyed but hundreds of millions of bushels of commercial storage grain, as well as tens of millions of bushels of on-farm storage grain, were also lost. Shannon Textor, who is a spokesperson for the Iowa Corn Growers Association, reported that it may be weeks to determine the monetary loss as a result of the storm.
“It’s really hard to get your arms around the devastation at this point,” Textor admitted. President Donald Trump took notice of the destruction and on Tuesday discussed the damage and promised Iowans the “full support of the federal government in recovery. According to Iowa Governor. Kim Reynolds, the devastation caused an estimated $4 billion in damages from the storm. During a briefing with the president, Reynolds described the storm as a “40-mile-wide tornado that went through the state of Iowa.” READ MORE
