JOIN USHope in the time of viruses of all kinds
When another year infected with a hustling virus has receded, there is little certainty about what the future holds for the world. The virus has moved across the alphabet and the world, mutating and evolving on the way, but its nature is still largely Greek to everyone. It is taking many shapes and forms, evading and dissembling, to resist the fight put up by a much more evolved life-form which thinks of itself as clever and powerful and has through millennia made it its habit the conquest of all that stands and moves. It should be a humbling experience for humankind to find itself unable to get the better of this unprecedented challenge, even as there is no sign of a variant by the name Omega appearing on the horizon, marking the end of the biological history of a particularly troublesome family of micro-life. The dialectics at work is remarkable.
It is not that there was no progress in the fight. Vaccines and drugs have been found and made, after telescoping many years of research and development into a few months, and they may have blunted the virus which was making the rounds. But our very human follies and failures let us down in critical ways. While those who could make and pay for the resistance indulged themselves and tried to protect themselves once, twice and more times, those who could not were left defenceless. The virus made good use of the sway of the selfish gene in individuals, communities and nations, and is shifting shapes to beat us. It is unlikely to give up till we realise that none of us is safe till all of us are safe, and act on that realisation. This is a test for us and it is not yet certain we will pass the test.
That brings up the question: While the virus has evolved to stay ahead, have we? Evolution may be noticeable only on longer time scales for species like the homo sapiens, but these are times of a collective threat that calls for tapping all reserve powers of survival. The survival protocols at individual and community levels are known and need to be followed. The more difficult task is to change ourselves so that we care for the neighbour, the neighbour’s neighbour, and others. That caring is the vaccine for the world. It will beat not just this mean virus from the world’s depths but other viruses from our own minds that move at the speed of thought to damage the world we live in. Lost economies can be repaired but a world lost to viruses of exclusion and hatred is difficult to mend. Let the New Year clear the world and our minds of malign viruses of all kinds.
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