CAN THE WORLD EVER UNITE
MAY 6, 2021
Can the world ever unite? A pandemic should unite theoretically all nations and humanity as one. Instead, we have only massive fights at almost every level. In India, the entire narrative fixes around the central pole of our PM. The haters hold him responsible for every single evil in the country including the cat which lapped up their milk or the abusive drunk in their neighbourhood. The lovers make it a point to inform that Modi is responsible for the butterfly looking beautiful in their gardens. The pandemic has overwhelmed all the countries in the world (except perhaps China). People in the western world are also rebelling against instructions and causing problems for the governments by holding public parties without masks. Vaccination shortage is acute even in the western world. Without exonerating our government which took the extremely foolish step of conducting elections across the country which no political party, media, intellectuals, or the judiciary (perhaps in summer vacation) bothered to oppose, these are just desperate times for the world.
This is a time when we should have risen above the need for making money at every level (vegetable sellers inflating their prices; hospitals raising their charges; journalists selling shocking photographs for big money; pharma companies making huge profits; crooks selling fake medicines; individuals in black market schemes) or from the desperate desire for power.
Only two threats could have possibly dissolved borders and joined humanity as one: a pandemic or an extra-terrestrial threat (meteors, asteroids, and maybe aliens too). We have lost the first opportunity; perhaps the second undesired option remains the only hope. Carl Sagan said that we should always strive to become a two-planet species because the frail human mind does not have the intellectual and emotional capacity to protect itself and the Earth indefinitely. We need a back-up. Another scientist says, our Earth may have reached this stage of civilization many times before. At a crucial stage of nuclear development, humans or their equivalents endowed with similar kinds of brains might have simply blown themselves up. Our combined nuclear power has the capacity to destroy humanity and all living life many times over. But, a small corner of the human mind still allows us to live with some optimism as everyone seems to be fighting just about everyone else and solutions become new questions.
STOP SPREADING PANIC OVER CORONAVIRUS
There is an unprecedented panic over coronavirus at all levels from individuals to societies to governments to global level organisations. The print, visual, and most importantly, social media, have undoubtedly contributed a major part in perpetuating the scare. In the wonderful book ‘Panicology’, the authors say that there is a general difficulty in accepting that natural events still have the power to occasionally overwhelm us. Simultaneously, there is a near obsession with human race to blame ourselves for things that may not be our fault, like a new virus or freak weather events. We tend to believe that we have unleashed the forces of nature through arrogance of scientific optimism.
And then we start disbelieving at the limitations of medical science and governments, panicking on a global scale at the possibility of mass extermination by chemical, biological, or nuclear wars. There also starts a round of abuse for the deficiencies of medical science and governments. Most viruses and bacteria want to survive and not kill. Rapid killing would prevent any form of symbiotic relation required for long survival. Most pandemics are because of organisms with high infectivity but moderate pathogenicity only.
The human immunity, evolved over hundreds and thousands of years, is capable enough to tackle most biological threats evolving naturally. In fact, such is the level of symbiosis, that only 10% of our total cell mass are human. 90% of the cells are alien to us, living peacefully in cooperation, filling each other’s needs. Some of the microorganisms in our guts belong to a notorious ‘who-is-who’ list of villainous bugs. Only during some immunological compromise, do they become pathogenic.
Bacteria sometimes get the term of a ‘global organism’- a mutation in one part of the world can reach the other end of the Earth within 24 hours, without any human agency too. More important than closing borders, hounding affected people to the point of shooting them (if social media needs believing), a more open policy of education, self-reporting, surveillance, and quarantine will surely help in tackling the crisis which is bound to end in some time. The social media is uncontrollable, fortunately there is no longer a blind belief in its content. The print and visual media have a huge role in containing the panic by staying balanced and helping to maintain the same in society too. Good poultry practices, washing hands and avoiding open sneezing are always good practical health measures and those are still the cornerstones to protect ourselves in this latest round of ‘virus attack.’
https://www.thehansindia.com/my-voice/myvoice-views-of-our-readers-11th-march-2020-611093
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