COVID 19 —A warning from Mother Nature?
I never thought I will live to see this day. An invisible micro organism has brought our world to its knees. Even after a century of technological advancement, parallels are being drawn to the 1912 Spanish flu pandemic. The might of all of our knowledge has not been sufficient enough to allow the world to contain the virus fast enough. As of now 7,000 people are tragically dead because the world was not prepared for anything like this. Not that there weren’t enough warning signs. The talks of a superbug manifesting itself, one that is resistant to antibiotics, have been doing the rounds for a while.
Scientists and academic leaders have warned about food industry’s incessant use of all kinds of drugs to increase fruit, meat, and dairy production. All those hormones and antibiotics are bound to find their way into our bodies and make us resistant to drugs and medicines. I hope the vaccines will work and this is not the superbug that the thoughts leaders are afraid of.
The biggest irony is that the all countries in the world are prepared to launch nuclear weapons against each other but were caught like deer in the headlights when COVID-19 caught them all off guard.
I still cannot fathom that so many people have tragically lost their lives so rapidly due to the virus. At the same time, I question whether this is one of Mother Nature’s earliest warnings to us. I know one could argue that we have had Zika, Ebola, SARS and other deadly viruses too. Maybe I am falling prey to the availability bias but I really don’t remember any virus or disease that spread so rapidly and affected the entire world so quickly.
I deeply care for the environment and have often worried about the alarming degradation of our natural ecosystem due to overuse, overproduction and over consumption. My silver lining in this global curfew is that the earth will breathe, even though for a few months. Emissions will slow down, consumption of mindless stuff will stop, and maybe, just maybe there will be a slight slowdown in the rising global temperatures.
I wish that every year for a month the world just stops and stands still. We all take a moment to reflect and pause and are forced to stop consuming. This can’t just happen during holidays because we are still in the consumption mode.
Maybe there will be a COVID anniversary month every year to remember all those who died and to remember that Mother Nature is watching and all our technological advancements will be useless against her.
I just wish there was a non-lethal way for this kind of phenomena to happen. But then as human beings, we will not listen. Only life threatening situations make us truly listen. And boy are we all listening!