The following report is by the United Nations Environment Programme:
Food waste continues to hurt the global economy and fuel climate change, nature loss, and pollution. These are the key findings of a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report published today, ahead of the International Day of Zero Waste.
The UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024, co-authored with WRAP, provides the most accurate global estimate on food waste at retail and consumer levels. It provides guidance for countries on improving data collection and suggests best practices in moving from measuring to reducing food waste.
In 2022 there were 1.05 billion tonnes of food waste generated (including inedible parts), amounting to 132 kilograms per capita and almost one-fifth of all food available to consumers. Out of the total food wasted in 2022, 60 per cent happened at the household level, with food services responsible for 28 per cent and retail 12 per cent.
Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world. Not only is this a major development issue, but the impacts of such unnecessary waste are causing substantial costs to the climate and nature. The good news is we know if countries prioritise this issue, they can significantly reverse food loss and waste, reduce climate impacts and economic losses, and accelerate progress on global goals.
said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.
Since 2021, there’s been a strengthening of the data infrastructure with more studies tracking food waste. Globally, the number of data points at the household level almost doubled. Nevertheless, many low- and middle-income countries continue to lack adequate systems for tracking progress to meet Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 of halving food waste by 2030, particularly in retail and food services.
Only four G20 countries (Australia, Japan, UK, the USA) and the European Union have food waste estimates suitable for tracking progress to 2030. Canada and Saudi Arabia have suitable household estimates, with Brazil’s estimate expected late 2024. In this context, the report serves as a practical guide for countries to consistently measure and report food waste.
The data confirms that food waste is not just a ‘rich country’ problem, with levels of household food waste differing in observed average levels for high-income, upper-middle, and lower-middle-income countries by just 7 kg per capita. At the same time, hotter countries appear to generate more food waste per capita in households, potentially due to higher consumption of fresh foods with substantial inedible parts and a lack of robust cold chains.
According to recent data, food loss and waste generates 8-10 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – almost 5 times that of the aviation sector – and significant biodiversity loss by taking up the equivalent of almost a third of the world’s agricultural land. The toll of both food loss and waste on the global economy is estimated at roughly USD 1 trillion.
Urban areas are expected to particularly benefit from efforts to strengthen food waste reduction and circularity. Rural areas generally waste less food, with greater diversion of food scraps to pets, livestock, and home composting as likely explanations.
As of 2022, only 21 countries have included food loss and/or waste reduction in their national climate plans (NDCs). The 2025 NDCs revision process provides a key opportunity to raise climate ambition by integrating food loss and waste. The Food Waste Index Report underscores the urgency of addressing food waste at both individual and systemic levels.
Robust baselines and regular measurement are needed for countries to show changes over time. Thanks to implementation of policies and partnerships, countries such as Japan and the UK show that change at scale is possible, with reductions of 31 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
With the huge cost to the environment, society, and global economies caused by food waste, we need greater coordinated action across continents and supply chains. We support UNEP in calling for more G20 countries to measure food waste and work towards SDG12.3.
This is critical to ensuring food feeds people, not landfills. Public-Private Partnerships are one key tool delivering results today, but they require support: whether philanthropic, business, or governmental, actors must rally behind programmes addressing the enormous impact wasting food has on food security, our climate, and our wallets.
said Harriet Lamb, CEO of WRAP.
UNEP maintains tracking country-level progress to halve food waste by 2030, with a growing focus on solutions beyond measurement towards reduction. One such solution is systemic action through public-private partnerships (PPPs): Bringing the public sector, private sector and non-government to work together, identify bottlenecks, co-develop solutions, and drive progress. Appropriate financing can enable PPPs to deliver farm-to-fork reductions in food waste, drive down GHGs emissions and water stress, while sharing best practices and encouraging innovation for long-term, holistic change. PPPs on food loss and waste are growing worldwide, including in Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and in the UK where they have helped cut over a quarter of household food waste per capita from 2007-18.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious.
He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster.
Proverbs 12:27, 18:9
As indicated by those verses, modern convenience naturally creates exponential waste and excess. Because most people no longer have to raise a farm or garden, gather foods and herbs, hunt and slaughter for meat, and milk livestock, and instead have easy access to cheap, low-quality foods at a convenience and grocery store – people become negligent to actually eat the full portion, save and preserve it, or use it for something else. Instead it automatically gets thrown in the trash while mass hunger and poverty continues to grow all around the world.
As for you, don’t be wasteful. Eat all the food that you pay for, or find some kind of use for it.
Having said that, the UN and other globalists see this as a power grab to forcibly mitigate what people can and cannot eat. As a matter of fact, this same group of globalists and corrupt governments facilitate these inequalities, high prices, and hunger in parts of the world because they put farmers out of business, steal land and over-regulate hunting, and force populations to buy from their syndicated businesses.
As alluded to by the UN, with one of their SDGs being to end hunger (which really means more people are going to starve), this means the elites will continue to move to create more famine and supply chain issues; and mitigating what people can and cannot consume will be key, with the incoming aid of digital IDs, CBDCs, social credit, and tokenization.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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That really sickens me! America throws good food away the same way we do old paper.
America’s days of living high on the hog are coming to a close and there’s going to be starvation and they’ll regret disposing of their sustenance!
So, are you identifying with those ‘gods’ who know what everyone everywhere does with their leftovers or food? And, our judge, as well? What people do with food they grow or buy is between them & God….& this is Vatican propaganda disposing of a tool, those cronies & traitors within this nation who conspired with & aided them in the ‘transformation’ of America, along with the righteous ‘collateral damage’ as in all of their contrived, money-making wars & usurping ‘coups’. Rome could divest itself of but a fraction of its hoarded & ostentatious display of licentiousness & wealth, ‘art’, & property & solve both the ‘monetary crisis’ & the hunger of the truly oppressed & hungry in a hurry. But she’s diverting the blame & hate, thinking she’s ‘getting away with something’ while only fulfilling the Lord’s prophetic word on the wrong side, & drawing many who use their ‘feeler’ more than their ‘thinker’, their fleshly response rather then informed biblical understanding, right into their net so that they comply with it & don’t get in the way & hinder the antichrist agenda.
That’s all comes from restaurants, fast foods, bakeries, how are stingy as Satan to take over to the homeless shelters and women’s shelters or GIVE IT FOR FREE. They would rather see it in the trash than give it away for free to anyone in need.
I have seen it soo many times.
Oh, I HATE that! Especially buffets, UGH! Gluttony and waste central. So much food left untouched and it should be given to the homeless and homeless shelters and given to those without, but instead these greedy PIGS would rather exploit and misuse capitalism because they’d rather charge than do the right thing and bless those who can’t eat with good leftovers that are great for consumption and all the obese gluttonous Americans pack Golden Corral and stuff themselves sick!
Same thing with church buildings having potlucks. The hirelings and false christians don’t want to bless those who are without, they’d rather go to their cult building potlucks and stuff themselves like a bunch of cattle at a feeding trough!
We used to enjoy buffets occasionally. Back in the years when they were clean & well cared for, & before manners went out the window as families were destroyed, Titus 2 went out the window & social services began teaching entitlement (especially to minorities….to show how more than equal they were, I guess) & that being rude, demanding & taking lots of food somehow made you more equal.
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They also brought in lots of foreigners of un-Christian cultures who think it shows their caste or level of karmic privilege & power to do such things & to be rude to staff.
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I personally taught my children not to touch what they weren’t going to eat, or to take more than they would eat. And, an adult got their food until they were of an age to do it neatly & ably: no running around the restaurant ‘being kids’ (little monkeys) etc. We taught them to leave a clean table, often stacking them to help out staff, & embarrassed for people around us who treated them like dogs.
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But you know what they taught the kids in public school: entitlement & that parents urging their children to clean their plates or eat a balanced meal was why Americans were obese! Nutrition should be left to the ‘experts’ & dietitians, not ‘amateurs’.
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(This was so they could direct& control diet, reward crony’s with school food contracts, plus make crony jobs & collect more taxes. It also helped to cover up what was going on with all the sugar & other addictive additives, vaccine & meds problems, obesity & effeminacy encouraging hormones in the food, the rising rate of allergies to normal God-given foods like milk etc while blaming family & God’s order & design for it. )
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The experts began serving junk food in the schools & counting a sugar-laden ketchup packet as a serving of ‘vegetables’ back in the ’70’s. Some of the older school cafeteria cooks & so forth wept seeing the changes….but the local schools were being phased out for big, ‘consolidated’, ‘more efficient’ schools so that the caring touch & personal connection to the children was lost.
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Most kids used them to pound & see how far they could shoot the ketchup out as discipline was considered wicked but the subtler cruelties of mind control & psych-games ‘more loving’, because the humanists teach that men come of animals, yet are somehow ‘innately’ good….& when that doesn’t work, they get all hypocritical & self-righteous about ‘people like that’.
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Fascist corporatism & communist corporatism were supposed to be opposites when they’re the same critter, but you can keep the division & puff up lots of self-righteous indignation & offense, or entitlement by playing the game & not teaching either whole truth, or how to reason, test & compare claims, & to do legitimate research.
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By the time you got down to the Clinton’s, Michelle Obama & Trump, the food liars & nazis, communists & Grand Masters & cronies only got worse: with fewer & fewer equipped to do more than shout one-liner ‘tweets’ at one another.
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Conditioning taught in the schools & at social services counseling over several generations that parents meant well, but didn’t really know what they were talking about. Meanwhile after school specials & media taught that kids were expected to talk smart, talk back, be wasteful to stay thinner, and to disrespect parents & all authority.
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Parents were working more & more hours to support all the taxes, & taught that ‘love’ meant more stuff for the kids, & dragging their weary bodies to every school event & sporting activity put on by overpaid ‘mentors’…..a level in the new priesthood of not-so-new Rome.
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Just like the communists & Catholic self-righteousness, mind-control guilt-trippers taught nerve frazzling ascetic & just-in-time minimalism & unreal ‘efficiency’ in place of well-prepared & margin of error, civility, etc & calling anything else ‘hoarding’, inefficient etc.
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A lot of young people have NO CLUE how conditioned they are by those things, & aren’t spending enough time in the King James Bible or with proven, seasoned & mature elders to know the difference between arrogant, ignorant rudeness and true Christian charity & wisdom, proper communications.
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I Corinthians 15:33 KJB Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
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EVERY generation is tried & tempted. It’s easy to see where others before you were deceived, but not so much your own. Those who read & know their Bibles learn about such things as they go. In the account of Rehoboam whose young peers & advisers probably taught him to make excuses based upon his father’s errors rather than where he was righteous, & to acknowledge with David that their righteousness was measured between them & God, & by his word: repentance, & the thought & prayer: Against thee I have sinned.
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How many in our psych-conditioned & controlled populace, even of the redeemed, have that first response? Why should God bless such rebels & sinners with protections such as were afforded to Daniel etc even in the hard times of judgment? Anymore than others of the nation in which they were born who are to give their best as aliens & pilgrims passing through after salvation? Letting until he be taken out of the way? Longsuffering as God. No preferer of persons or exaltation of self, but making a difference where differences should be made, judging right judgment: not mixing the holy with the profane & serving the evil agendas meant only to corrupt & to destroy?
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We also loved potlucks in the one church we attended that was still not totally gone. It was good to mix & mingle with known, saved people before the ‘transformation’ began coming in, & men weren’t willing to remove themselves from bad vows, unbiblical philosophy & tradition coming in from the ‘Bible colleges’ & worse, ‘seminaries’, in the case of chaplaincies. You can’t have a Christian chaplaincy anymore because of their psych-socialist standards, & lying pretense to do so also removes you from God’s blessing.
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It was at that time we had to leave even there, & not without grief & tears.
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Prior to that those dinners were always a good thing. A time to share with frugal, traveling missionaries. And, trust me: little food went to waste. Missionaries or lesser fortunate families were always quietly offered anything left over to take home with them. Quietly so as not to shame, or make spectacles of either them, or tooting the horn of those offering.
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Pride is a terrible thing. Ignorance & hear-say is a good place for it to breed.
Restaurants used to donate leftover food when this nation was still biblically influenced.
It was in the Depression years, with the imposition of the ‘salvation’ presided over by FDR that they began wasting food counter to the biblical admonition: Proverbs 28:27 He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse.
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There’s another verse in Proverbs that speaks about not destroying food when it could feed the poor, and the Law addresses not gleaning a field, but leaving it to the poor who aren’t just being idle leeches. I can’t find the verse in Proverbs ….nor remember it exactly, which frustrates me to no end when that happens….but it’s there, & it really hit me when I read it remembering how Roosevelt’s policies ‘saved’ the farms by having them pour out milk, etc, so that there wouldn’t be an excess: following the laws of the secular form of capitalism rather than God’s.
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I remember when the closing shifts used to be able to take home leftover food from the fastfood restaurants in the ’70’s. It was the manager’s responsibility to have the minimum food ready to meet customer demand, minimizing waste, so that it wasn’t abused. My brother worked the late shift the last two years of high school for that reason! There’s stewardship & there’s stewardship, but he was so tight he squeaked!
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The fast food restaurants & poultry slaughtering jobs were often taken by young people, too: because they paid minimally & weren’t meant to be family-supporting jobs. But then the ‘Great Society’ attitude came in.
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Instead of encouraging the industry of young people & students, which in many cases aided their families & kept them from degrading, demoralizing dependence upon the dole & welfare, ‘Social Services’.
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Education began more & more to include ‘counseling’ (the ‘secular’ surveilling, manipulating & organizing ‘confessional’ tool) …..and to push organized team sports for boys…then girls, too…under mentoring ‘coaches’ usurping the affection of children for their parents, their place & God’s in the students’ lives.
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Folks who compromised & took the paid public school positions made more money than anybody else in normal competitive industry. When those who called themselves ‘Christian’ were told to hide their Bibles in their desk drawers or to leave them at home so students wouldn’t see, & be influenced by that: they did it for filthy lucre.
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We met a black educator & administrator who got so fed up with it as it came in that he quit & took a managerial position with a local bakery. He said that it was exploitation, & that all the money that should be put into real education was being shifted to socialist enslaving ‘teamwork’ & sports.
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After awhile, they began saying that people were ‘taking advantage’ of the late shift food thing, & began putting it in the dumpsters. At least the homeless could still get it there, but it was wicked & greedy.
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They said they didn’t have enough Americans to work the ‘unwanted’ entry level jobs, so they started importing & exploiting degraded Catholic & pagan foreigners who would do it. At first the foreigners would undercut this country’s skilled laborers, then ‘organize’ & demand the same wage American’s were demanding & receiving. Which was used by an excuse by the corporations as the union/company dialectic excuse dance continued with VERY few exposing & calling the abuses of both sides out by King James Bible light.
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I worked at a five & dime type store after school during the same years my brother was Mr. McDonald’s. Department stores would send what didn’t sell & overruns to the bargain stores like that, & then the managers made the decision whether to donate the things that didn’t sell there to REAL charities manned by volunteers, & sometimes to workers they knew personally who were struggling to support themselves and/or their families.
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That changed in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s when they began taking usable merchandise to the trash compactor & destroying it.
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The government social services were changing the definitions of what qualified for donation to the poor. It had to be ‘grade A’ and department store quality.
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We also did seasonal work on a local strawberry, potato farm as young people. I remember the shock of the farmer who owned that farm who had always taken the smaller potatoes & donated them to the county home, as many farmers did with their excess, the year they turned him away & demanded only grade A, number one.
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He then put them into lower cost 50# bags, but ended up dumping & wasting loads of them. He couldn’t give them away because back then few were in that kind of need who were able bodied & willing to work.
We see on YouTube that some homeless people do go through garage cans in the back, but some businesses have now fenced in their garbage dumpsters so that the homeless can’t get in them, which is not very neighborly. I know it sounds awful to rummage through the dumpsters, but the homeless have no problem doing it and someday there will be more than just them doing it.
Maybe the homeless shelters should go pick up food that they are going to throw out before they do.
Part of the ‘activism’ now happening in America is targeting the homeless, & socialist rules won’t allow ‘leftover’ food to be donated or used: only grade A, number one. People are putting fentanyl & such on food that used to be available to the homeless, because they are cruel & think it’s funny, or are into the death cult spirit really deep & possessed. Some put it on candy or food left laying to tempt children in park areas etc, or where the homeless are known to shelter. It also ‘hooks’ some, making the ‘homelessness problem’ worse ….another angle of the legal-illegal drugs game, & dialectic turning of the screws of agitation, division, trying to provoke violent responses.
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Be careful with tracts, too. They’re cruel & hateful….blameshifters & accusers extraordinaire, these antichrist creeps. Hand them directly to folks when at all possible.
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We had that first turn up in our fairly rural, small-town area during the Obama years.
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It’s a wicked world. There’s sin on every side encouraged to cover & confuse: but the endgame & goal is to overwhelm all resources, creating all manner of desperation, & then take over: ‘bringing order’, ‘restoring order’, even calling it ‘Christian order’.
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They do not care who they run over or maim or addict or kill to achieve that end…..and they’re not really Americans doing it, but traitors & internationalists in the main who have no ‘god’ but themselves & Lucifer, & no country but wherever they can seize dominion by hook or by crook, theft, murder, whatever: survival of the fittest.
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When they achieve their ends, the big boys at the top & deepest in seize control & kill all those ‘dupes’ & ‘useful idiots’ they conditioned & organized to do their dirty work for them. If they’ll betray their own & sell out on all that’s right & true in the doing: they’ve proven to those encouraging treachery that they can’t be trusted by them either.
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You didn’t see popes & cardinals leading the crusades & pogroms they fomented either. But those who are recruited & led to blind, zealous folly….like many a nutty monk, or vision-seeing child egged on by some pragmatic creep or nutty monk ….DIED leading those crusades without ever seeing the so-called ‘holy land’, or else they saw it as betrayed slaves: sold out by middle men working for Rome.
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After the largesse that came to Rome following the so-called ‘Children’s Crusade’ (and Pope Innocent refused to release those from their vow who made it to Italy & the shipyards, became frightened & suspicious; wanting to return to their homes….guaranteeing their exploitation & enslavement); the names of the slavers at Marseilles are also known….. Rome was no more in debt, and she built an extravagant Chapel of the Innocents to show her appreciation for those sold-out peoples’ misplaced trust, zeal, & ‘sacrifice’.
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All those public monuments of every cruel & pagan nation come to mind, do they not?
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Nothing new under the sun….but those who forget: as all sinners are only too wont & inclined to do: really are doomed to repeat the folly, the errors & the horrific consequences. The only good that could come of any of it is the salvation of what few souls who knew enough to recant popery, repent & receive the Lord by faith, even in slavery & extremity …………….& the vengeance & judgment of the Lord that is going to come because of it.
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They really used those folks like the CIA uses people internationally, lying to them, winning their trust, bribing etc…then using them. Or the way the FBI cultivates unstable shooters, young folks of troubled backgrounds, broken homes, on psych-meds etc here domestically & uses them.
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Men are going to receive the man of sin & the antichrist beast system. Tragic, but true, & you have to know where your help comes from, & who’s handling or has handled it, & the risks involved: what’s worth it & what not. Prevent homelessness wherever you can. Directly intervene if you can: but with great care & caution. Prudence. NEVER alone.
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Legit street preachers must video everything to avoid false accusation. Not an unwise precaution for Christians seeking to be charitable either.
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Beware: & be teaching your children, because it’s not likely to get better as things wax worse & worse. Pray for guidance. You can’t help if you become part of the wounded, or the deceived & used to evil ends & agendas.