The Age of Covid Solitude: Better a Live Rat than a Dead Lion!

What has happened to us?! We used to be so careful as a species, we used to fear death, we survived this far into our evolution! Why are we abandoning common sense and reason now?! Maybe back when death was so close and not antiseptically amputated from day to day life, we were more fearful and thus more careful. For most families around the world, the death bed of an elder or sick member is usually a hospital bed, not a bed at home. Death is sanitized, it is something that happens somewhere else, not in our “happy home”, and yet it will intrude when you least expect it. 

 

Deaths from Covid 19 or SARS Cov 2, are just numbers on a screen for many, they don’t have the immediacy and urgency of inconvenient, messy, shockingly visual death. Maybe that’s why so many of us just do not “believe” in the severe lethality of the novel coronavirus. There is that word again, “belief”! After all, when we see “Don” in the red baseball cap vaunt his robust health on television after testing positive for the virus and when we watched how quickly he recovered, who would believe white-coated, bespectacled, nerd scientists warning us to keep our distance and wear masks and wash our hands?!

 

Our earliest known mammalian ancestor: artist rendering

Here’s the thing, it’s not survival of the toughest it never was. Its survival of the smartest and the most fearful and careful. When the dinosaurs were dying after the giant asteroid hit Earth, our ancestors were small mammals living underground https://www.livescience.com/60888-rat-creatures-were-earliest-eutherian-mammal-ancestors.html. They survived in a world of giants because they had a very well-honed self-preservation instinct. Almost every creature was bigger and stronger than they were so being fearful and careful came naturally. And the blind mole-like mammals inherited the Earth!

 

Today, we see all over the world humanity getting “comfortable” living side by side with the virus. A sort of fatalistic acceptance that it’s going to be around for a long time so we better get on with the business of living and adapting. Except, we don’t adapt, we relax and go back to our “near normal” lives. And we are doing that at just the time when most respiratory viruses tend to propagate and spread more easily and more successfully than in warmer weather. We are exhausted, naturally! Who wouldn’t be?! But, that does not mean we should let our guard down or take unnecessary risks.

 

Ultimately, being careful and fearful will save lives but hurt the economy and may even condemn certain businesses to extinction. The hospitality and travel sector around the globe has probably suffered the most, and it’s not over yet, it’s likely this sector will never recover and may even go extinct in two or three years if this virus is not brought under control. And controlling the virus with a vaccine is not a forgone conclusion, viruses mutate and change to adapt to changing conditions, its why we have thousands of strains of influenza and not just one and why we need a flu jab each year and not once in a lifetime! 

 

Those human mammals who quickly recognize the new threat and protect themselves against it get to pass on their genes to the next generation, which bodes ill for many Trump supporters. Stupid doesn’t survive very well in a dangerous ever evolving living planet, were new dangers can come from nowhere. Belief will not save you if you fail to social distance, wear masks and wash our hands regularly. God is not there, he is not listening. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can save yourself. We are small, blind mammals living underground, arrogance and willful ignorance doesn’t suit us! The sooner we realize and accept our new position in the food chain, the sooner we can stop this pandemic dead in its tracks.

 

I know that most people around the world are looking forward to Christmas and the New Year, this year more than any other we can’t wait to see our loved ones, embrace them, kiss them celebrate with them. But, we must resist the urge. I know it’s been a hard year and we deserve to let our hair down, let our guard down and let loose… but we mustn’t! I can’t stress this enough; we must not give the virus what it wants: a large pool of potential hosts to feast on!

 

Just because our Lebanese Government has allowed festivities to proceed all be it toned down and restricted, that doesn’t mean that we have the all clear, far from it in fact. Governments, all governments have to weigh the health of the many against the health and sustainability of the economy and survival of the weakest in the economic system, the minimum wage earners who need to work or they don’t eat. It’s a tough choice to make, our government has already said that infection rates will go up 25 percent after the holidays, I suspect that figure to be on the conservative side, it may double or triple in fact.

 

I don’t aim to terrify you dear reader, but I am saying that congregating in large numbers in indoor venues, even ones that are well ventilated, is a risk. In a party, you cannot stop people from walking around the place and going over to other tables or talking loudly and spraying the room with a fine watery mist. There is no such thing as a controlled celebration. If alcohol is present, the instinctive precautions we normally take go out the window.

 

I know that the long-suffering hospitality sector will hate me for saying this, but going out for a meal or a party is simply not worth the risk of infection and death. So, let’s go back to using common sense and be more reasonable. The 25^thand 31^stare just dates on a calendar, celebrations can wait till after next spring, when, hopefully, we would celebrate the vaccination of 70 to 80 percent of our population. Now that is an achievement I would love to celebrate!

 

Stay Safe, celebrate at home, meet and connect online, use common sense…