Pandemic Paradoxes

Language offers a clue to the fantastic spread of the current crisis around the world ... quite clearly in the word pandemic is the panic infecting the interconnected people, led by governments, media and medical experts, all finding their roles in the drama ... and despite more measured voices about the likely effects, fear at every level creates conditions for economic meltdown, conspiracy theories abound and the situation offers everybody a chance to have an opinion and crucially to choose whether to play the best version of themselves or the worst ... maybe ...

Looking a little closer, bearing in mind that each of us, being at the centre of our world, seeing things not as they are but as we are, stepping back with a calm, though not completely quiet, mind, we might observe this crisis playing out with some logic, given the erroneous start point ... as proposed by an eminent German virologist (source please), who describes the nature of a virus, as a living entity, depending for its existence on a host, in this case human, though many mutate via other animals ... dropping for now the unhelpful wartime rhetoric of the enemy virus, and accepting they live among us and within us without malign intent ... this particular  mutation, not especially more dangerous than any other version, which annually sets off the pneumonia that enables the death of  thousands of people with compromised immune systems ... usually without much comment, though previous  ones have caused some consternation ... this one, isolated in a research laboratory in Wuhan, somehow caught the attention of the World Health Organisation, or rather their attention leaked out to set off the chain of panic prepared by the increased connectivity of the world ... deaths, not significantly greater than other years, became death tolls, people with job descriptions and possible adverse consequences of being perceived as acting outside of accepted norms leapt into action and continue to leap ...

The ducks on the river, the birds in the trees seem unaware of all the trouble ... wild garlic is so abundant it becomes a healthy, tasty pesto and a soup, both possibly helpful for self-distancing as well as immune system boosting ... along with the fresh air and exercise deluded advisors recommend vulnerable folks avoid ... indeed in other countries police enforce house arrest ... even in normally revolting France ... how easily we give up our freedom ...

Meanwhile, since everything works at every level, the Earth itself, has its immune system compromised, mainly since the industrial revolution, with the planet itself choking, its resources running out, its lungs or forests reduced drastically ... and Gaia is not yet ready to die ... her existence is dependent on the Sun, which has some billions of years of heat and light left ...

On the plus side, optimistic motorists await the 30% fall in oil prices finding its way to petrol pumps, pollution levels internationally, not least in Wuhan, fall massively ... the degrowth economy appears in the crisis and perhaps provides the respite Gaia requires ... or maybe gives humans a chance to survive a little longer, since Gaia may cope better without us ...