I must excuse myself to the readers and staff of this newspaper, for having stopped writing for such a long time. The reason is simple − I was overwhelmed by events.
On the health front, it was a national emergency and I had to keep seeing patients with added safety precautions for my patients and myself, which caused anxiety. On the educational front, I am a lecturer in Health Sciences at MCAST. I had even more anxiety in that I had to learn a new gamut of methods to continue lectures online, take attendance, carry out verifications and conduct exams, assignments and corrections online! Not an easy task! They say that necessity is the mother of invention!
“For neither do men live nor die in vain” is a famous line towards the end of H. G. Wells’ classic, The War of the Worlds. It forms part of a longer sentence.
“By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians 10 times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”
We have earned our right to live on earth by developing an immune system that reacts to infections by viruses or bacteria and other microbes. Those who have an immune system that can fight the infection, survive, those who cannot, will unfortunately have a greater danger to die. This is the law of nature. Fortunately, our immune system is equipped to learn and after an infection, it arms the body with a new set of immune responses which can fight the same infection if it had to come round again! In this way we earn our place on this earth. This in fact, is the whole aim of Wells’ novel. It is often missed. Wells wanted to put forward a literal comment on the then new germ theory that had been proven with the development of microscopes. We could now see them for the first time! Although we can react to events with our foresight, man is still not completely free from the forces of evolution and natural selection put forward by Charles Darwin!
Although the national reactions to the viral challenge varied from country to country, it is now clear that those countries which put forward reactions based on academic advice from the WHO fared much better than those who did not. At the beginning of the epidemic (it is not over yet) I had predicted that the UK and the USA would fare badly in this epidemic. Today as I write, the UK is the country with the highest death toll in Europe and the USA with the world’s highest and the count is still rising. The USA has no social medicine so it was bound to suffer more but there was another social malaise that was pre-disposing both these countries to disaster.
They had a populist government and leaders! The word populism is hard to define but widely used. In philosophical terms I would compare it to two heresies that plagued the Church in olden times. One was the Manichean heresy and the other the Gnostic heresy. Manicheism saw the world in black and white – black for physical things of the world being bad and white for the spiritual things being good. Rather platonic with a dichotomy between body and spirit! So the Manicheans had a world view, which made them introspective and they withdrew from the physicalities of everyday life which they regarded as bad.
The Gnostics on the other hand refuted authority. They refuted the doctrinal approach set by authority and decided to take a new approach based on intuition! How they felt, an emotional approach alone, even when it contradicted reason itself, rather than reason! Modern day political populism is a hybrid of both. It forces nations to look internally and not externally. To detach from the world, not to engage, to return to the cave where it is nice and cosy! To lead by popular sentiment even when it contradicts reason! The gnosis takes the approach that rather than rely on the authority provided by academic advice in a particular field from politics to medicine, based on reason, one leads by emotional intuition alone. Populism is a hybrid of neo-Manichaeism and neo-Gnosticism.
Look at both Trump and Johnson. They withdraw from the world order with “America first”, leaving the Paris accord on the environment, attacking the EU and globalisation with the UK actually quitting the EU. This never made any sense not even economically. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. They withdrew from the world and paid excessive importance to the national sentiment when reason dictated otherwise. They led their politics not so much on reason but on emotions alone and all know where that leads us. A lesson missed from the old history of Brutus, Mark Anthony and Octavian! This is why they failed horribly with Coronavirus!
The WHO gave a specific set of instructions to world leaders based on the medical science of epidemiology and virology. True to style, they ignored it to focus on their own emotional-based solutions, but with a virus, as opposed to politics, the retribution is immediate. Their political failings to take advice from authority and lead by intuition has led to their countries being hit the worst by COVID-19 than anybody else including China. One nearly paid with his own life for it! Their approach to COVID-19, with Trump even shutting off funding to the WHO, is a blaring example of the failure of their brand of leadership and a good example of how things should not have been done!
The post Corona world requires an approach based on one in the opposite direction, one based on international solidarity; one based on a greater need of a social economy and more attention paid to environmental and issues of nature! The EU is adapting to prepare a fund to help its own member countries and others in their recovery. A sort of post-war Marshall Aid plan. There will of course be squabbles but that is normal until the plan is finalised. The new world response requires one of more international co-operation and solidarity not less! So the Salvinis of this world had better re-think their strategies if they want any part of the goodies to be dispensed and the help given in other ways!
This leaves a final paragraph which I will reserve for God alone. Many have asked where is God in all this? Has he gone to hide, does he exist, where is he if he does? Like the germs under the microscope, just because we do not see something, it does not mean it does not exist! God has created us and given us our freedom. He has also given nature its freedom as well with the laws of nature he created and which we refuted originally and continue to refute.
The laws of nature dictate that viruses and other microbes mutate and jump from one species to another as they have been doing for millions of years. That we do not constantly consider this possibility, with the Spanish flu only being a hundred years away, is our own failing. This COVID-19 business was the mutation of a virus which jumped species and which occurs naturally every so often. It will occur again so we should factor that into our future decisions. But God was there! Man does not live on bread alone! He was there in all the people who in some way or other helped – the medical and nursing staff especially, the political leaders and all those who helped out in any way, even in ways that may seem small or trivial. People who kept things going when the world seemed to stop! God may work directly on nature as he did when he calmed the cruel sea, but often he relies on us, in his same image, to do so. So, God was there after all in several ways, in more ways than we can imagine. So, let’s raise our glass to those who carried out and still carry out their daily duties in the face of adversity, to those who are ill, patients, and to those who died, the realization of a better world.
What would have been in vain is if we do not learn from our own experiences! To build a world which pays more importance to international solidarity, social solidarity and to solidarity with nature, rather than simple financial and individual interest. A new economy for a fairer world order! Otherwise we would have lived and died in vain!