Is the corona virus experience teaching us something that we didn′t know?

Do you know that we knew that the Corona virus was an eminent threat since 2007? Yes, that is right. Back in November 2007 a team of four Chinese scientists from the Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology, Research Centre of Infection and Immunology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Vincent C. C. Cheng, Susanna K. P. Lau, Patrick C. Y. Woo, and Kwok Yung Yuen) published a paper in the Clinical Microbiology Reviews magazine where they make a detailed biological and molecular description of the microorganism. But then, and this is the most remarkable thing, they wonder if we should be ready for the re-emergence of SARS.((which had caused an outbreak in Southeast Asia with around 8000 cases and a 10% fatality five years earlier)

"Corona viruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination (375), which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."

Two-three weeks ago I was like the majority of you thinking and planning about all the "Very important"things that we needed it to do in the following days, weeks and months.

Truth to be told, nothing makes me more happy that being around my wife and kids at home, its amazing how many fun things you can do surrounded by the people you love the most. But I cannot stop wondering about the real lesson that this extraordinary and very sad situation is trying to teach us. There is no doubt that we need to question our existence and the direction that we want to take from here after stabilization. I am very conscious about how ephemeral life could be and how fast things can change for any of us at any given minute, but do we really want to be this fragile over a virus? The social, political and economical systems and platforms that we have developed throughout decades became absolutely near meaningless when facing a pandemic crisis like this one. Trillions of dollars spent in healthcare, military, technology, space investigation globally only in the last 30 years and we are not even prepared to face a virus without collapsing our global economy and disrupting dramatically our everyday life.

One of the lessons that time has taught me is that there is no bad thing that cannot give rise to a good reality. Everything, even disasters conspire for the possibility of good. Sometimes we need to discover the path of goodness that comes from onslaught of misfortunes. But sooner or later our gaze lights up, the darkness fades away and there is finally a path of clarity.

The corona virus pandemic total damage is not yet distinctly visible. We always knew that a pandemic threat was a major challenge for humankind. But now that we had the chance to experience it face to face, a catastrophic real life use case that obligate us to rethink our priorities from this point forward.

Our global healthcare reality was exposed and many questions arise. Is the healthcare industry in serious need of a major investment focus from now on? The unexpected corona virus unchained the urgent need of increasing our current medical emergency capabilities worldwide. Positive landscapes will open up as the world slows down, we are realizing that the planet and our lives might be different. No doubt that there will be serious economic obstacles, but for now the corona virus has defeated our social, political and economical systems and platforms. Finally, we give human life more value than ever.

We have to start evolving in the right direction. Don′t you feel that priorities need to be shifted a little bit? I mean, how is that global business leaders are spending billions of dollars in space travel programs when we cannot even sustain a strong flu virus properly? I love Tesla and Amazon, but Space travel? really? This and Military spending are just two of the many examples that come to mind when thinking about this pandemic that could have been avoided with a clear-cut order of our priorities.

It reminds me about the Counting Crows song "Round Here" :-)

"Round here we always stand up straight, Round here something radiates"

Round here we always stand up straight, Round here something radiates"

Our Ego is to blame for not letting look at the right place. There is so many brilliant people around us with unlimited resources, but not focusing in what is really important to all of us.

Osho was a crazy-brilliant-and-funny character, but he was so right about Ego:

(Not that I am an Osho follower at all, but certainly he was sometimes smarter than many. I am also part of his described historic ego conspiracy. Reason why I like to read him sometimes and question myself)

"Ego does not exist anywhere else except in human beings, and ego starts growing as the child grows. The parents, the schools, colleges, university, they all help to strengthen the ego for the simple reason that for centuries man had to struggle to survive and the idea has become a fixation, a deep unconscious conditioning, that only strong egos can survive in the struggle of life. Life has become just a struggle to survive. And scientists have made it even more convincing with the theory of the survival of the fittest. So we help every child to become more and more strong in the ego, and it is there that the problem arises."

 "As the ego becomes strong it starts surrounding intelligence like a thick layer of darkness. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is very delicate, ego is very hard. Intelligence is like a rose-flower, ego is like a rock. And if you want to survive, they say – the so-called knowers – then you have to become rock-like, you have to be strong, invulnerable. You have to become a citadel, a closed citadel, so you cannot be attacked from outside. You have to become impenetrable."

 "But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes slowly slowly a dead phenomenon." 

"You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world. But you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same: Attain! Reach! This is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego"

In any case, this experience is definitely an eye opener for everyone in this planet. There is a lot of inner work to do for all of us. I am definitely proud of the way the majority of citizens are behaving and the job done by our healthcare workforce during this crisis, but at the same time we have do a better job choosing our priorities in life. This will make us a better human race.

My sincere condolences to all those families worldwide that have lost a dear one due to this catastrophic pandemic. A lot of reflection ahead for all of us.