The lost and found of the covid pandemic
Article from Noseweek Magazine September 2020. By Bruce McLeod
In a recent BBC World News interview, former senior British judge, Lord Sumption, described the general response to the coronavirus pandemic as ‘collective hysteria.’
He went on to say that we appear to be ‘…working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease.’
Statistics relating to worldwide deaths attributed to COVID-19, taken together with statistics relating to total deaths and births (without which there can be no proper context) add weight to his position. They also identify a greater threat as studiously ignored as the coronavirus pandemic is fixated upon:
Human numbers worldwide have increased from roughly 2.5 billion in 1950 to just shy of 8 billion in 2020. That is in the course of my lifetime. As of 20 July 2020, since the beginning of the year, there have been some 77 million births, 32 million deaths and the human population has swelled by a further 45 million. And if you don’t see in all of this the seeds of a catastrophe too ghastly to contemplate then, as lawyers are inclined to say, I rest my case.
These figures translate into roughly 360,000 babies being born, while around 150,000 people die every day. According to WHO data, worldwide deaths attributed to COVID-19 for the month of April (the worst month on record since the pandemic began) amounted to 181,374. This translates to 6,045 deaths per day or 4% of the average worldwide daily death rate. Figures for May, June, and July show little variation with daily deaths averaging out at around 5,000.
Being a 69-year-old man places me in the group at the highest risk of death from COVID-19. Despite this, I’m statistically far more likely to die from a wide range of other dread diseases, and no amount of fretting on my part will alter this circumstance. Furthermore, if I had any say in the matter, I would without hesitation choose a relatively quick demise from COVID-19 over a lingering, less dignified slide into dementia or death from a stroke, heart attack or cancer.
At the time of writing (20 July 2020), the total number of deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic in early February (6 months) stands at 607,000. Of these deaths, the overwhelming majority relate to people over 70 years of age with underlying health issues. Viewed from a more objective perspective than that which derives from collective overreaction and panic, the sum total of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is significantly less than the unremitting flood of human babies delivered into the world – every 48 hours!
With all due sympathy and respect for those who’ve lost loved ones as a result of the pandemic, and regardless of whether the general response to the pandemic is rational or irrational, the key issues surrounding the sustainability of human life today are not relatively insignificant shifts in death statistics resulting from COVID-19, but an out of control birth rate and
a debilitating sense of entitlement and greed, which engenders collective denial and confounds any meaningful diagnosis or understanding of the prevailing and unquestionably diseased human condition.
Scientists have been warning of the dangers of a virus, global warming and the consequences of nuclear war for decades and surely, at some level, there must be a recognition that the wholesale plundering and abuse of the Earth by a seething mass of 8 billion people simply isn’t sustainable. It had to happen sooner or later and now that it is here, in the shape of the coronavirus, it would seem to come down to an almost impossibly slim chance of turning the brute machine we’ve created around, and the far more likely prospect of extinction.
The primary reason we’re unlikely to make the necessary changes relates to our instinctively acquisitive natures as primates, and resultant inability to let go of a perceived prize. It amounts to greed overcoming reason, and it arises in virtually every instance where the desire for possession is counterposed by danger. A monkey trap is a simple device and consists of a wire cage tethered to a stake. The trap is baited with nuts or the like and has an opening just big enough to allow the passage of the animal’s hand – but too small to allow extraction of the hand with the nut in its grasp. Despite its terror at the sight of the approaching hunter, and knowing full well that its life is in jeopardy, the monkey is simply incapable of letting go. Peanut or Porsche, to the primate mind the object of desire is quite literally something that’s to-die-for.
Carl Jung proposed division from nature as the primary cause of neurosis and psychosis, and with large swathes of the global population on anti-depressant medication, it seems fair to suggest that collective neurosis if not insanity is a ubiquitous reality. Perhaps no word in the English language describes the knock-on effects of division from nature better than the word ‘dominion.’ It’s the ultimate expression of acquisitiveness, amounts to totalitarianism, and it is through the repugnant and morally indefensible concept of dominion (taken as a divine license) that the origins of environmental terrorism and the systematic trashing of nature are vested.
Homo sapiens sapiens. Doubly wise as the arrogant title suggests – or the single most stupid animal on the planet? We pollute, desecrate, and mindlessly destroy the natural environment (God’s creation if you prefer). Everything is up for grabs. Nothing is sacred and, rather than being responsible custodians of the natural environment and protectors of our animal companions, we’ve become their worst and most feared enemy – as exemplified by the cruel cages in the market places of Wuhan, and the endless patchworks of private property we euphemistically refer to as ‘progress and development’ but which amount to an unremitting and merciless war against nature, and the establishment of a social hierarchy in which a minority prosper at the expense of a landless and poverty-stricken majority. That’s how we roll.
And while humans ponder the deep and perplexing philosophical issues surrounding the meaning and purpose of life, it is no mystery to any other species – all of which possess a collective unconscious or ancestral memory function in the form of instinct that, taken together with their experiential faculties of reason, provides a holistic form of intelligence that delivers the optimal balance of acquired knowledge and hereditary wisdom – to the purpose of survival.
Divided from nature, the fine balance of reason and instinct in the human psyche is lost. Much revered IQ is determined by testing of cognitive brain function alone, with no account taken of instinctive or phyletic memory function whatsoever. We are accordingly creatures of great knowledge, with little or no corresponding levels of understanding, empathy, or the benefit of ancestral wisdom stemming from the dawn of life on Earth, to moderate our behaviour or guide us on the pathway of life.
When I was at school I was taught the usual three R’s in preparation for life in a dominion-oriented society. In hindsight, had some of my lessons been held outdoors, in a more natural environment than a classroom, and if my lessons had included responsibility (for my own actions) and respect (for all life forms), I might have had a more holistic education and a better chance of achieving my full potential as a man and as a human being. As it happens I consider my life to have been shallow, materialistic and largely meaningless. I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren and, short of a significant decline in human numbers and a revolutionary change of attitude in towards the natural order, I see little reason for hope.
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in many deaths. This is regrettable and sad. Lockdowns have caused job losses and financial ruin for huge numbers of people.
But whether the cure is worse than the disease or not, and all other considerations aside, the pandemic has put a dramatic stop to the machinery of exploitative, if not mindless human economic activities and lifestyles. It’s also done more to raise awareness of the need for fundamental change in our relationship with the natural environment, than any form of human intervention could ever have achieved.
The coronavirus pandemic is a shot across the bow from Mother Nature, and perhaps the last opportunity we’ll ever have to engage our allegedly prodigious powers of reason, figure out how to free ourselves from obsessive materialism, address the issues of overpopulation and resume our rightful custodial duties and proper place in the circle of life. It amounts to creating a gentler and more caring society. Native American’s call it ‘mending the sacred hoop’ and that just about says it all.
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