Covid 19 impact in the US economy

Purpose of the speech: To inform the impact of the virus in the economy
You will develop your introduction, which should include: (1) hook, (2) ethos, (3) relevancy/reason to listen, (4) thesis and (5) preview.
You also want to start developing your entire speech, the body of the speech.
FOR SOME REASON IT WAS NOT LETTING ME UPLOAD FILES BUT HERE IS THE EXAMPLE OF IT IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE WHEN FISISH . (DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THAT LONG)
HERE ARE THE SOURCES TO USE AND YOU CAND ADD SOME MORE IF YOU NEED TO.
1ST: https://www.brookings.edu/research/ten-facts-about-covid-19-and-the-u-s-economy/#:~:text=During%20the%20COVID%2D19%20recession,income%20shock%20(Monte%202020)%3E.

2ND: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2020/10/12/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-us-economy-and-financial-markets/?sh=367af0e52d20

3RD: https://www.brookings.edu/research/explaining-the-economic-impact-of-covid-19-core-industries-and-the-hispanic-workforce/
I. Introduction

a. Close your eyes and take a second to picture your favorite food. I know for me, I would imagine a burger. There is nothing better than biting into a juicy burger, experiencing all the flavors and tastes overwhelming your taste buds. However, that burger I love, and the food you pictured is currently threatened because of how we are treating our earth.

b. Why you might ask? Well I was surprised too when I had stumbled upon this information. I had continuously been finding memes of people with stone-cold facial expressions with the same quote plastered all over it “when you remember that bees are dying globally at an alarming rate.” Because I kept encountering those memes about bees, I did what any curious person would do: I researched bees and their effects on the environment, and what I found shocked me.

c. While we tend to swat away bees because of fear or annoyance, we are more dependent on these little fuzzy black and yellow insects then many of us realize. In order to understand the importance of bees and why so many people are concerned about them, I will explain (1) the major impact they have on our food sources and (2) that while we’re normally afraid of them hurting us, it’s time we recognize how we are hurting them.

II. First Point

a. While all of this started with me noticing these memes, they did accurately depict the major decline that is occurring in our bee population. It’s easy to think this decline will only affect beekeepers and honey lovers, but bees have a much greater impact than most realize.

i. If you had to guess, what percentage of each meal that you eat do you think bees are responsible for? 1/20,1/10,1/5, 1/3.

1. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit dedicated to environmental advocacy, states that “every third bite of food you eat, you should thank a bee for.”

2. You might be wondering how that is possible. Well many crops rely on bees to pollinate. Birds and insects pollinate too, but bees are the most common pollinators we have. Pollinators go plant to plant, flower to flower, fertilizing the plant enabling it to grow and produce food, by transferring pollen and seeds.

a. Without the bees performing cross-pollination, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture highlights, the crops have less ways of getting pollen and seeds transferred to them.

i. Some examples of crops that need pollination are apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons; just to name a few.

ii. And for those who don’t consume a lot of fruit and vegetables, you’re affected too: NBC News states that “even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees.”

1. So, imagine that 1/3 of the ingredients for that incredible, juicy perfect burger I described earlier are no longer available, not just seasonally, but ever.

b. TRANSITION: The importance of bees is clear, but what is less clear is reason behind their rapid decline, so the next question to address is “why?”

III. Second Point: We’re normally afraid of bees hurting us, but now it’s time we realize how we are hurting them.

i. It’s no surprise that we as humans have not been very kind to our environment over the years; in fact, we’ve been pretty awful to it. You can look to the news to see how poorly we treat bees.

1. This past December, reports the Sioux City Journal, two teenagers vandalized the bee population of the Engelhardt’s, a husband and wife who run a bee keeping business. The boys threw all their equipment and bees out in the snow, and in an instant half a million bees died. This was a major tragedy for the Engelhardt’s, but it’s also a tragedy for our environment and food supply. However, half a million is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the millions of bees that have been dying year after year.

ii. According Dennis VanEnglesdorp, Assistant Professor of Biology at the Univeristy of Maryland, “An annual survey of roughly 5,000 beekeepers showed the 33% dip from April 2016 to April 2017,” though years before that the dip was closer to 50%.

b. Because bees are complex creatures, the catalyst of their destruction is multifaceted. Scientists still aren’t entirely clear what is affecting bee populations the most, but there are some environmental factors that play a large role. According to the EPA, Scientists have identified a variety of factors that are connected to bee population decline such as drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution and global warming.

a. Many of these factors are caused by the activity of humans, so in some ways we are shooting ourselves in the foot because we are hurting a creature that helps us to continue our food supply.

b. Other factors such a drought and weather changes, we have less control over, but we also know that bees are absorbing lots of manmade chemicals.

i. Recent tests, conducted by the EPA, of bee pollen elicited the discovery of 150 different chemical.

ii. Many fertilizer companies are utilizing chemicals that are now shown to be poisoning bees. One example would be Monsanto, which is one of the most well-known and largest fertilizer companies in the world.

iii. Ironically, Monsanto is now at the forefront of trying to stop the problem. According to the company’s website, it has not teamed up with beekeepers to try to save bees. The company’s scientists came up with a process called RNAI, which interferes with the bees’ genetic code in order to make them hardier and better able to defend against the different causes hurting their population. This research is still in its infancy, so only time will tell how effective this will be.

IV. Conclusion

So while many of us get scared of bees as soon as one approaches us, we swat and we run, but the harsh reality of the situation is that although the bees may not seem to fear us, they should be. We rely so heavily on something that we treat so poorly, and many of us didn’t even know about it, so the next time you are eating a juicy burger or biting into a piece of fruit, remember you have a bee to thank for that