Hope springs eternal

Friday 1st January, 2021

Year 2021 has dawned without much gaiety. A feeling of doom and gloom pervades the globe as there are no signs of the COVID-19 pandemic going away anytime soon. Infections are on the rise the world over, and so is the death toll. Health experts fear the worst is yet to come. But a way out is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility. Hope is said to spring eternal!

The dawn of a new year is time for reflection and resolution. The best New Year message has come from WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, unofficial as it may be. It contains a warning and urges humans to learn from the current health crisis if future disasters are to be averted. He has said COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic to trouble the world unless humans learn to act responsibly. The current pandemic has highlighted the intimate links between the health of humans, animals and the planet, he has said, warning that efforts to improve human health will be doomed unless the critical interface between human and animals, and the existential threat of the climate emergency that has made earth less habitable are meaningfully addressed.

What has brought the world to this pass is mainly the hubris of humans. They have even taken upon themselves the task of controlling the populations of other creatures through savage culling, having disturbed the natural processes that help maintain ecological balance. They themselves are now facing a cull of sorts. All it took to knock them down a peg was a microorganism which is believed to have come from a wet market, where wildlife was for sale. That is Nature’s way of telling humans to opt for a course correction or perish. The pandemic is reported to have caused a huge drop in the sale of wild animals for food across the globe.

The world has got back to basics, so to speak. People have opted for minimalism for want of a better alternative. They have realised during lockdowns that what really matters in life is satisfying their basic needs. The problem is that the lessons learnt during crises are forgotten soon.

The global economic bubble created through the unbridled exploitation of natural resources and mindless consumerism burst when it came into contact with the spiky virus. Airports were closed and jumbo jets grounded. Shopping malls were shuttered and production lines suspended. Development had reached an unsustainable level, causing pollution. If not for the pandemic, which put the brakes on harmful human activities, more people would have died due to pollution and other such ill-effects of development than of COVID-19. Lockdowns brought the pollution levels down, and the ozone layer reportedly began to heal. But the world is sure to revert to the status quo ante after the pandemic runs its course.

The technologically advanced nations are pushing the envelope in extending the frontiers of science. They are literally reaching for the stars. Some of them are studying black holes, looking for water on Mars and bringing soil samples from the moon. But they have pathetically failed to tackle the troublesome virus on earth!

One can only hope that all nations have learnt from their failure to get on top of the pandemic and realise the futility and absurdity of spending colossal amounts of funds on arms manufacturing and warfare while striving to beat the virus, but in vain. As the WHO chief has wisely said, if humans are to remain healthy, they have to pay more attention to animal welfare. In fact, what they should do is to leave animals alone. Nobody knows whether other viruses are waiting to jump from animals to humans. Luckily, COVID-19 is not as deadly as Black Death, which is believed to have carried off about one third of the population in Europe in the 14th Century. But there is no guarantee that the current health crisis will not take a turn for the worse or the world will not have to contend with deadlier pandemics sooner or later. A way out may be sustainable living with compassion towards other species and respect for nature. It looks as though the time had come for the world to slow down.

We wish our readers a happy New Year!