Read part 2 of this article here.
There are many who would agree to me that COVID-19 is what N. Taleb calls a Black Swan event (youtube link 4:05 min) Even when it was reported on Dec 31 2019, not many of us thought it would disrupt the world like it has today. Social scientists given to Systems Theory would call it a Catastrophe, not in the literary sense of the end of everything, but as the end of something old and the beginning of something new (Science Direct article link). It was just an event horizon, something that we could not see beyond, like a bend in the road. So what brings about such catastrophic events? How do such events break up the comfortable life that we once knew? Those who believe in Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence (Brittanica.com)would be quick to point out that there is a periodicity in the pattern of global pandemics. We just weren’t looking at that cycle that is all. However, there are those who would say that it is a result of sensitive dependence on initial conditions (Glassnert and Weiss, 1998). ( If you are wondering what’s so strange about that, here is the Wikipedia link. ) The conditions were all building up, we just didn’t see them that is all. So what were the conditions for this catastrophe?
Initial Conditions (Precedents)
- Travel: Viruses are transmitted by hosts. The Great Bubonic plague of the 14th century was triggered by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, which lived in the flea that lived on the black rat. The black rat itself was transported along the silk route to the Crimea and from there by ships to other locations (Wikipedia). So it was a bacteria spread by a flea transported by rats who were transported along the trade routes (silk route). Interestingly the article suggests that the Plague existed in South Asia before that. One way to look at it is that when a pathogen reaches a new population, they have very little resistance to it and cause havoc. This is well discussed in the history of Syphilis (Wikipedia). Some say that the native American population was decimated by diseases that were brought by the colonizers, others say that Columbus and his sailors brought it to Europe from the colonies. Sometimes the disease is known by the place where it spread first. Syphilis was called the “French Disease” because it was first brought back from Naples by returning French Soldiers. Covid-19 was also known by the place where it was first detected. But that is a rather unscientific way of looking at it.
- The Sixth Extinction (Wikipedia description of the book): There have been five mass extinctions that have happened before this (National Geographic). They were not manmade. They say the sixth extinction is manmade. But isn’t man part of nature? While it is tempting to blame unbridled human greed as the cause of this extinction, there is another way to look at it. As system evolves, its parameters change and then the old subsystems become unviable. This is not to say the end of everything, perhaps we have just reached the peak of our era. It is time to hit the reset button. In an extremely complex ecosystem called earth, humans do not control the reset button. A single virus could achieve what climate change experts have been trying to do for YEARS! Did global warming trigger the right conditions for the virus to emerge? Are there more waiting to emerge, say under the melting permafrost of the Arctic and Antarctic? What would the RESET button be like? Does the human race have the resilience to survive this?
- Epidemiology For a quick technical overview of the subject from NCBI, click here: (Surely Covid-19 is not the only disease to sweep the globe in recent years (Science Direct)? Why is the Novel Coronavirus different? Perhaps its got to do with the fact that it spreads faster and more rapidly. Perhaps its because we monitor health more closely, especially for communicable diseases. In 1854, there was an outbreak of cholera in London (Wikipedia). At the time, it was thought that diseases like Cholera were caused by Miasma or bad air. (Perhaps it is has a parallel in today’s theory of droplet contamination that requires negative pressure isolation wards with negative room air-pressure when dealing with Ebola and other contagious diseases (Wikipedia).) Although Louis Pasteur had not proposed the Germ Theory yet, Dr John Snow, a physician was not convinced that Cholera was caused by bad Air (UCLA, Dept of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health). He turned detective, and by tracking down cases, he showed that almost all the infection cases happened to people who used a particular handpump in Broadway, London. He then had the pump handle removed, effectively stopping the epidemic (watch a Harvard video on it here… youtube: 8 min (the video also tells us why it was safer to drink BEER than water.) Epidemiology is the where medicine, biology and social sciences meet. Advances in testing and mathematical modelling of epidemics (Elsevier), make it very important to detect early, predict the spread and take containment measures. Hence the alarm-bells go off early.
- A social phenomenon and a media circus: Today almost 100% of all news channels contain news of the progress of Covid-19 across the world. Informal channels are choked with half baked truths about the disease. The Govt machinery has the unprecedented reach to declare a lockdown, asking people to stay indoors. The conditions are very similar to life on active frontlines of a war. People worry about dwindling supplies and when it will all be over. Most of us do not know how the lockdown will help in anything but delay the progress of the disease. Flattening the curve is not because there are fewer people sick, but because they will be sick over a longer time frame. But the good thing is that people have come together to stay away in order to protect the vulnerable. For most of us COVID 19, is not a threatening disease unless you belong to the vulnerable section. Vulnerability in terms of COVID 19 means…
- Age above 70
- Asthmatic
- Diabetic
- Immuno-compromised
- People who are already weak from another infection or serious disease
In short, most people are undergoing unprecedented hardship, to protect people like me and others who belong to the vulnerable group. It’s no wonder why an observation made by the Cultural Anthropologist, Margret Mead (Forbes) has resurfaced as a meme in the era of Covid 19.
Next: What happens after the lockdown is over? Read part 2 of this article.