Covid Musing 1

There is a lot that is being made of the “collective” trauma that the world has witnessed in the past one year. COVID-19 sure as hell made 2020 annus horribilis for the entire global economy. The only saving grace was that perhaps the suffering was evenly distributed – no third world / first world distinctions... the global affluent ‘north’ suffered as much as the ‘south’ and perhaps more so.

The numbers of dead that far exceeds certain wars and armed conflicts. On the one hand one would dismay the reduction of human life to mere numbers and ask that we consider the grief felt by those that lost near and dear ones. On the other hand was this truly as much of a ‘trauma’ compared to the Holocaust or the Partition or other such epochal periods of time in history? Humans suffered greatly and in unthinkable ways then, the most that we had to suffer through was the within the safe confines of our homes with wireless internet bringing the world of entertainment right in your lap. All you had to do was wiggle your finger.

Of course the pandemic had human costs. Contrast the notion of individual privilege most of us were lucky to enjoy with the ordeal that many migrant labourers suffered in their treks back home across India or in other parts of the world where the dying were piled up because the medical systems were not able to cope. So there has been plenty to be happy about if you stop to think about it and reflect for a moment. The fact that you are alive and healthy at this moment is a lot more and a lot better than what others have had to deal with.

The one thing that was done to death in my mind is the insight that everyone seems to be sharing these days, along the following lines - “we really learned the ‘value’ of family” - “we had the chance to re-examine our lives” - “you just realize you can make do with so much less”. And yet these are the very folk who have jet off to the Maldives at the first chance and definitely no body has announced that they are now exiting the tumultuous public life as they have attained self realization and now look forward to a life of peace. How curious!

We have labelled this as a “war” against a disease as it affects the human race. Often wars are fought over a principle... in the epics it was always “good versus evil” and in human history more often than not the vanquished were the ‘bad guys’ that had to be defeated and thank god for the ‘good fellas’ that rescued us from misery! In the case of the corona virus – what exactly in its nature is evil? And why do we assume the mantle of being the good / the correct side? As a species we may quibble that we have improved things for all humans and lifted so many out of poverty and increased life span etc etc. In this age of “Anthropocene’ as Harari calls it, we can and must acknowledge that we have done plenty of harm to the planet as a whole though. So whom are we winning against exactly in this war? If the price of victory is the continued reign of H. sapiens... is it too much to pay?