COVID 19: SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

The Canvas

The world is on COVID fire. Debatable claims and contestable data apart, death lurks around the corner. Expansionists and exclusionists alike, nations have sealed borders. Within borders, states, regions and provinces are erecting boundaries in desperate acts of self-preservation. Planes grounded, ships harboured, rails blocked, roads deserted, factories shut and shops emptied, world economy is covid-struck. While governance is stretched, hoarders, black marketers and speculators play havoc.  Richest to the poorest, mightiest to the meekest, technologically advanced to the technology untouched, humanity is under siege.

Spread of infection, likely causalities and how it will end are mathematical models only time can validate. But for now, the deluge of patients overwhelms even advanced medical care systems forcing doctors and nurses to choose who should live. The pandemic has put every possible element of societal existence to test. People are locked-in amidst growing uncertainties.

Mankind never looked so pummelled ever before.

Exodus

The twenty-one-day Indian lock down, triggered an unprecedented population displacement. Lakhs of migrant labourers, each one a potential corona vector, clinging on to measly accumulations from a life of toil, fill the once-busy highways and toll ways in desperate attempt to get home. The exodus could result in exponential spread of the pandemic across the country, should a few be infected. They could, if not managed, also add dangerous dimensions to the situation.

Fuel to Fire

Social media is abuzz with all sorts of conjectures about the pandemic. Well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, believers and atheists, doctors and quacks, in fact the whole world seems to be there, indulging in the ridiculous smothering the few meaningful and useful.

What Caused the Pandemic?

One could  choose answers, at convenience, from an endless range of options like, Armageddon, angry God, nature’s revenge, biological war, economic war, etc, list limited only by imagination. The truth could be anything but discussions on the likely cause will occupy prime time for a long time.

What About Us?

Having enslaved science and technology, we conferred on ourselves the apex position amongst all known species. But we are still part of the ‘food’ chain. Most species ‘down’ the chain adapt and mutate to survive and propagate. Many naturally outlive us. Unfortunately, the highest in the chain is also directly linked to the lowest, the family of microbes. In fact, microbial colonies reside within us.

Somewhere a corona virus decided to mutate and become lethal. How and why it did so, is stuff for investigations and imaginations. COVID-19, like influenza, will reach each one of us sometime. Most of us won’t even realise it and go about as usual. Some will need help. The sick and old, without intervention, could succumb. Lock-ins attempts to prevent community spread so that numbers simultaneously requiring critical care are restricted. When that fails, mortality would spike.

While we may be traumatised by large scale deaths, nature goes about with business as usual, working on inter species equilibrium.

Behavioural Change?

Many feel that this collective trauma would change human behaviour. The most comforting theory is that mankind would become compassionate and considerate.

Nothing but fallacy, for history speaks differently.

Men, women and children have fallen dead like flies even before. The five pandemics[1], together have killed more than two hundred million people. If natural causes were inadequate, we killed more than twenty million people, during the First World War and another sixty million during the Second. Carnages, continues across the globe even amidst the pandemic. Compassion remains a faraway destination as humans remain discriminatingly inhuman.

Change for Sure

Yet, there will be remarkable changes.

Disruptions have this unique capability of ushering in dramatic changes. League of Nations, United Nations, trade and military alignments, efficacy notwithstanding, have all emerged after disruptions. In the wake of every recession came new class of business and newer ways of conducting it. Despite fudged data and loud denials, economies were already slipping into recession. This pandemic just silenced lies and accelerated the fall.

From this lock-down will sprout, new industries hitherto unheard of. New class of service providers would mushroom, providing more jobs than what would be lost. Office premises will invade homes and acquire different dimensions. High speed data and high definition video would drive business practices and may become universal and free, eliminating requirements of physical meetings. Hospitality industry will have to rig up newer ways to stay afloat. Tourism industry could crumble but recover in new forms. Insurance sector is likely to see major thrust feeding on human fallibility. Logistics and warehousing industry will be reorganised. Mining and manufacturing would see surge in automation. Production lines would become agile, flexible and decentralised. Digital transaction of money could surge sending paper currencies to the vaults. Education industry too could experience dramatic upheavals. Possibilities are phenomenal and the bounce back, imminent. Sadly, income disparities will become even more stark.

Focus Now?

Change will come, at its own pace.

The focus now is to stay alive and see the light of the day beyond COVID.

Human race has periodically been tested. This too, we shall overcome, scathed or unscathed. 

That is how mankind has evolved.

---

[1] Plague between 541 - 542 AD continued till 750 AD, is believed to have wiped out, 25 to 100 million. The plague pandemic called ‘Black death’ is believed to have wiped out one third to half of Europe in the four years from 1347 to 1351. The bubonic plague of 1855 is said to have erased 10 million people in India alone. The Spanish flu caused by a strain of influenza tormented the world between 1918 to 1920, infecting about 500 million and killing between 17 to 50 million humans. The Swine flu of 2009, infected more than 700 million people killed just 18,306.