Corona the vaccine, we the virus.

Swans in Venetian Canal
 Credit @filterjm

Probably for the first time since Man started giving salutations to the feared forces around him, he has been asked to stop all kinds of religious congregations in big groups. For aeons, Man believed that maladies take place because the Divine forces have been angered. In their simple understanding, the only avenue left for them to correct the tragedy is to appease the Divinity by glorifying it to high heavens; hoping that He would throw us His Grace.

Hence, despite appeals by the authorities, practitioners of various faiths continue to put their trusts in the forces above, not in rational thinking and the sciences. They feel that people have been misled for far too long. The way the human race appears to be heading does not assure them of a happy ending. Too many have placed self-interest above salvation to expect altruism to prevail.

There are groups of people who are hellbent in finding scapegoats. In their minds, many if not most germs came from the East. In recent memory, we have heard of SARS, H1N1 and Nipah Virus and their fixation with exotic animals like civet cats and bats. In the 14th century, Bubonic Plague and Black Death arose from the Far East via the Silk Road.

Scrolling through the annals of history, one discovers that pretty much every human pathogen originated from our exploitation of animals. Humanity's dominion over animals has unleashed a veritable Pandora's ark of infectious diseases. Most modern human infectious diseases were unknown before domestication led to a mass spillover of animal disease into human populations. For example, tuberculosis appears to have been acquired initially through the domestications of goats but now infects one-third of humanity. Meanwhile, measles and smallpox may have arisen from mutant cattle viruses. We domesticated pigs and got whooping cough, chickens and typhoid fever, ducks and influenza, water buffalos and leprosy as well as horses and cold virus (Michael Greger, How Not to Die).


Or is our decision to self-isolate against each other is Nature's conniving power play to avenge decades of rape of its sovereignty? Look at the countries which were teeming with excessive human activities and see what lockdown has achieved? China's citizens can finally get fresh air and see the blue sky without being enveloped with smog. One week of an absence of gondolas and visitors, dolphins and swans come out to play. It looks like Corona is the vaccine, and we are the virus of Nature.

Since prayers in large enough groups will not see any daylight in the near future, cries for help from the divine forces cannot happen. I guess we have to depend on our God-given intellects to save us from extinction.

Dolphins have appeared at the Italian coastline after the
shipping lines were locked down due to coronavirus (REUTERS)

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