Smart viruses and us

Human beings have so conquered nature that, for the most part, we have few lethal predators in our midst, except other human beings, of course. We can do little about those except to try to protect ourselves from them.

So we pretty well know the parameters of danger and have been lulled into a false sense of security. Increasingly, however, we face new and unimagined threats from audacious predators we often cannot even see. Repeatedly, the war analogy is being used, and it is a good one, especially because these sly, powerful enemies are armies of nimble snipers who repeatedly get us, backs against the wall, confused about the rules of engagement and with our arsenals quite bare.

The World Health Organization finally declared the latest killer a pandemic long after those with fewer institutional constraints deemed it to be so. True to form, the new big-C virus is spreading exponentially globally, into countries that cannot defend themselves. It is the worst public health virus in generations simply because it is travelling quickly, far and wide, across disputed borders, its clever, deadly ways disrespectful of opposing factions.

The death tolls escalate by the hour, and having decided to give the careless young people a get-out-of-jail card, the new big-C has changed its mind and took it back so that even the young are finally feeling threatened. The scientists are daily adding to their store of knowledge and we grab their coat tails, hungry for some new tip in self-preservation, expectant that a wonder vaccine will emerge, snake-charmed out of a test tube by some faceless, fully virus-proof clad genius in a lab somewhere, it does not matter where, or what language s/he/they speak.

Without doubt, the coronavirus is a super smart killer that has brought the world low, and worse may be to come, but those of us who live in the political and economic, if not actual, poorer southern hemisphere know that a lot of the narrative about this demonic plague is not entirely ours. It belongs of those “advanced” countries that have not had to suffer from countless deaths from malaria over generations, nor had the experience of seeing how chick-V stole the lives of many of our older folk or advanced the ageing process and mashed up the younger kin with a bad flu and left them with temporary arthritis. Neither have those lucky northern folks fallen prey to killer Ebola and dengue. When zika happened in Brazil, not too much notice was taken until it spread into the lower parts of the privileged north and grabbed the headlines.

This devilish C-virus is a great leveller in every single way. So much for all those little Englanders in the UK who long for England’s great and victorious past and demanded to be allowed to stand alone regardless of the cost. They cast off the European community as it if were a soggy leopard skin and took on the Trump-ish mantra of putting British people first. Now that all ah we is one the futile attempt of cementing difference as a means to national success has been revealed for its foolhardiness, where will they retreat to?

For certain, this plague will change the nature of the Brexit negotiations, because when we emerge from this ordeal the world would have changed. The same people who devalued the National Health Service and BBC now recognise their unique institutional importance.

I was in the UK as the new big-C crept up like an eerie, cloying mist across Europe and Britain. I watched as people continued with their unhygienic personal behaviour, wilfully oblivious to warnings.

Once younger people knew that they were unlikely to die from the virus they carried on regardless. They got a mild “flu-like” version of the virus, recovered and were out there again, crowding the pubs and bars, infecting everyone willy nilly. Even the old, who are higher risk, took few precautions when shopping or in public places.

Only last week I was unwillingly in a bank, with a single teller at an open counter and a queue of 17 strangers standing inches from one another. I sat apart with my gloves on and sanitizer at the ready until it was my turn 90 minutes later.

I requested the teller sanitize her hands before handling my documents and I sanitised them when they were returned to me. Other customers chatted with one another, pawed the filthy counter, and with bare hands patted the dogs that accompanied their owners. The PM finally locked them down.

In the end, we will be led out of this living hell by our political generals. Some will emerge bigger and some will be found out. This smart virus would have achieved what none of us could via the ballot box, i.e. a return to ground zero and a chance to re-order how we live. For sure, geo-politics and will not be the same either. Hold on for the ride.