SO THE coronavirus finally made it here in the Philippines (though at the time this article was written, there weren’t any fatalities yet). I’ve written about plagues before, and now is a good time to revisit the topic.
According to official reports, the Corona virus has flu like symptoms, which is troubling since we’re in flu season. There is also the possibility that it is currently mutating, and becoming more dangerous.
If you’re scared of the coronavirus, you should be. Viruses are a fact of nature, and cannot be walled off indefinitely. It’s true that human civilization can reduce plague-related deaths through medicine, sanitation and nutrition, but humans will never be safe from viruses until someone or some group cracks the secret to immortality.
The purpose of this particular piece is to provide context for plagues and viruses. Pandemics are inevitable. They have been with us throughout history, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. They are also like natural disasters in the sense that they come and go in cycles.
For example, the last major plague to hit the world was the Spanish Flu in 1918, which infected around 500 million people, and spread to even the remotest parts of the world, killing 20 to 50 million people in the process. Likewise, the Spanish Flu itself was preceded by other major pandemics, and it was succeeded by a few minor ones as well, like the 1968 Hong Kong pandemic for example.
We are overdue for another such outbreak.
It’s easy to forget that plagues were a fact of life throughout most of human history. That hasn’t really changed. The world remains vulnerable to diseases and outbreaks. We may have become more resistant to diseases but viruses are very adaptable, and they’ve been adapting to anti-microbial medication for years.
If I sound fatalistic, it’s because I’m realistic. The best way to deal with plagues is to treat them like natural disasters, and the Philippines has plenty of experience with those. The best case scenario for Corona is that it will peter out. The worst case is that it turns into a miniature version of the Spanish Flu.
Here’s the good news about plagues though. They don’t have a track record of destroying civilization. They can wipe out large swaths of population but they don’t destroy civilizations – at least not directly. Even the Black Death, the most well-known of pandemic outbreaks, did not destroy those civilizations that it infected.
But make no mistake. A lot of people will be dead, and several nation-states will face health and population crises, but they will recover in time. So that’s the worst case scenario for the coronavirus. It’s not much but it’s something.
The 20’s are certainly off to an explosive start. We’re still in the first month into the decade and the world experienced impending war, plagues and other visions of catastrophe. I shouldn’t be so flippant, but the 20s seems ripe for interesting events./PN
