Wild thoughts amid the novel coronavirus pandemic (2)

While the novel coronavirus situation seems to be leveling off in the western world like Europe and mixed in the U.S., in fact, from the global perspective it is still far from satisfactory because there are still a daily close to thousand new cases in Singapore throughout the past week while things in Russia is getting worse now. Coincidentally these two places are in two extremes in the climate that one is hot all year round and the other one is still cold at night now so it tells us that this virus can spread disregard of the weather. Unfortunately this phenomenon suggests that the earlier forecast made by the medical experts that this virus is going to be with us for good perhaps bingo. On the other hand, not only there were already protests in some of the states in the U.S. that people requested lifting on the ban a couple of weeks ago but there are also voices in the Europe that people urging for reopening. Ironically the U.K. prime minister Johnson has just made his speech about his experience on the fighting with the disease saying that he was indeed at the brink of death yet people just seems too brave to ignore the consequence of contracting this virus. Apparently just as what I said in my earlier post that if this outbreak as well as lockdown persist then the fear of more people will die from financial unwell than that from disease overrides mind. This is sad but true and this is the reality or dilemma the world is facing now.

While it is still controversial on the cause and origin of this virus but no matter what this is a setback of the arrogance of human being which is totally defeated by a much much smaller tiny creature at least up to this moment. Not only that an effective vaccine is still far from availability but even if when it exists, how much time will it take to produce enough dosages for the world's 7.8 billion population? Let alone some countries just even cannot afford to buy enough vaccine for their citizen. Willingly or not, herd immunity seems to be the ultimate resort for some poor countries despite at a high cost that many infected will not make it given the poor condition of the healthcare system in these countries.

Despite it is called novel coronavirus but in fact people should not be surprised on its attack. Medical experts have been waving red flag on the onset of the superbugs which is as the result of the abuse on the usage of antibiotics. In fact there are already a few antibiotic-resistant bacteria exist, namely MRSA, CRE, VRE...etc, that these bacteria cannot be treated by the usage of existing antibiotics. These superbugs can cause diseases in various severity from skin infection to death. Luck seemed to be on human's side so far that there was no outbreak of fatal disease caused by these superbugs. Is this Coronvirus just another red flag or will it end up to be the terminator? Time will tell. People should not forget that 90% of the population of the indigenous Indian in the America was wiped out by the virus brought to this new land by the European settlers centuries ago. Viruses are tiny but could be lethal.

Prior to this virus outbreak, human is so contented on their level of scientific knowledge and technologies. Some even think they are almost playing God's duties. People believe that there is a will, there must be way to defy the laws in the mother nature. The world, oh no, should be the universe is all up to human's exploitation. But is it?

No doubt that human's intelligence is above all creatures in the world so this single species excels in this planet. Human being not only dominates the earth but squeezes the room of existence of other species. With their superior intelligence human created a host of tools that other creatures are no match with in the competition on resources. Mankind seems to be almighty with the equipment built under their technologies. However, while people is contented with the progress made along with their intelligence, it seems they have overlooked that other species are also evolving along their own path. Different animals have developed different abilities which mankind is no match with at all not only to survive but also to race against their preys and predators in order to flourish. Unlike the external equipment to human being, these animals own these innate abilities built in their own bodies like bats can locate with supersonic, eagles see with super vision, electric eels shock their prey with high voltage electricity, sharks can detect the tiny electric wave emitted by the prey...etc.

When people is so proud with their equipment and the abilities brought by these tools, it seems they have never thought how vulnerable human is when they are deprived from these equipment which they take it as granted. No need to go too extreme to imagine when there is no electricity in the world but just imagine the Internet is, for some reason, no longer working then can someone think about what a world will we be living in? On the contrary our animals counterpart is not upset at all if one day no matter due to whatever reason human's technologies do not work anymore. There is a saying that if one day the world is destroyed by our own invention of nuclear bomb but cockroach will still be living.

Human appears strong and in fact we are strong when we are in command on our equipment. In other words, we are strong just because we have these equipment and we are nothing when we do not have them. The reality is that most of the people do not survive without the civilization we created.

I recall one of the lyric of the song Hotel California.

"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"