The message from Coronavirus: The Earth is Not Only For Humans

It is a strange time, my dear/. A novel virus haunts our streets/. Days feel like weeks, weeks like months/. It is a strange time, my dear/. Army men are marching our streets/. They force us to stay inside, threaten and arrest for a walk in the park/. They wage small wars against us, but this battle began long ago/.

Kamand Kojouri, an Iranian poet raised in Dubai and Toronto, and resides in Wales has written these lines last week which is the feelings of people across the world who are now nervous and under severe stressed as they are attacked by corona-virus. Thousands of effected people are now feeling deadly dance in their bodies as a new deadly virus attacked them with a new strategy and tactics they never saw before. After hitting the super power China, it has invaded more than 210 countries and territories and killed more than 14 lakh people of different ages, classes and religions. Every person is vulnerable and terrified of a virus which does not discriminate. So, the death toll is rising day by day and never in recorded history has humankind faced such a situation. 

Scientists have named this new virus as Covid-19 and termed it as a super virus among millions of viruses on the planet. In the first few hours after its entry into human body, scientists say, this super virus is applying all war strategies to invade human lunge cells and finally stopping breathing producing millions of virus solders. Before the war at the cellular level, the clever virus slips into the human body, navigating past defences in the mucus that gathers in noses and throats, on the hunt for cells it can commandeer. At the same time, it’s trying to disguise its presence to avoid tripping the chemical alarm system of the immune system – a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Coronavirus is all about human connectivity and the drawback for humans is that each human carrier is like a gambling machine that gives the virus trillions of lottery tickets – and the virus needs to draw just one winning ticket in order to thrive.

Surprisingly, most superpowers-China, USA, UK, France & Russia are under the deadly attack od this supervirus. Europe remains the epicentre of the coronavirus with Italy at the top of the curve and Spain is the second worst-hit country. After failing to stop the death tolls, US President Donald Trump said that “his country should go back to work” by Easter. Earlier, The Italian Prime Minister has said his country has exhausted all options to fight against the coronavirus pandemic and pleads to God to “rescue your people.” Scientists say the Covid-19 is the outcome of evolution of coronavirus, an ancient enemy of mankind and the current situation is a part of the ancient war between human and virus that killed millions of lives in the past.

So, the question has been raised: Does it a revenge from virus on behalf of the nature to punish the human who have disturbed nature and made difficult for other species to live in this earth?

If we look at the history, we will find the answer of these questions. In the last 100 years, humans particularly the super powers have made the history full of examples of people warring, displacing and wiping out other groups over territory, from Rome's destruction of Carthage, to the American conquest of the West and the British colonisation of Australia. There have also been recent genocides and ethnic cleansing in China, Australia, India, Kashmir, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Darfur and Myanmar where millions of people particularly Muslims were brutally killed by states backed by the superpowers. The human super powers misused power and resources to grab lands and resources through arms races that killed millions of innocent people, challenged nature by polluting environment wiping out forests in the name of development and modernization. The most terrible damage they made through conducting massive nuclear tests. The direct effects of such nuclear tests devasted vegetation and other life forms in an area spanning of hundreds of thousands squire kilometer across the region directly involved. The United States has conducted the largest number of nuclear weapons tests, where nearly 90 % of all nuclear tests were conducted especially by the USA, the USSR/Russia, and China in norther hemisphere. Now, nature may has struck back with full vengeance to punish humans.

Life and viruses are inseparable, scientists say, not all viruses are harmful to human, rather owe their evolution to them. Some viruses are life's complement, sometimes dangerous, but the inescapable by-products of life's success on the planet. A big species of viruses living with bacteria in ocean are helping human to get oxygen. F or example, globally the oceans contain 1030 viruses. If lined them all up they would extend for 10 million light years, or 100 times the distance across our galaxy. Collectively they would weigh as much as 75 million blue whales. Thus, viruses are a critical part of inorganic nutrient recycling and play an essential global role in the recycling of nutrients through food webs. We are only just now beginning to appreciate the extent of their positive impact on our survival.

So, we have enough room to believe that the human’s ancient enemy coronavirus has retuned back after massive evolution as COVID-19 to punish humans.

However, the current corona-virus attack on humans is not anything strange. Both species have been engaged in severe battles since the earth was ready for humans to live in. Viruses attacked humans several times with severe epidemics like flue, SARS, MARS and the toll of these epidemic surpasses all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined. Evidence of this battle has been preserved in our DNA for millions of years. Intelligent humans discovered medicines to kill viruses and vaccines as defense mechanism to combat virus aggression. But clever viruses have evolved with a new dimension and scientists have found that several viruses in recent decades have jumped from animals to humans and triggered sizable outbreaks to claiming thousands of lives. So, humans are a long way from winning the fight against viruses.

This time, the super virus- COVID-19 has launched sever assaults on all super powers and their allied humans with a bold message that the earth is not only for humans. So, humans need to decide what kind of planet they want to live on. Sooner they realise it is better on a planet of nearly eight billion people with billions more on the way.

(The writer is a senior financial journalist and Chairman of Bangladesh Journalists’ Foundation for Consumers & Investors (BJFCI). He can be reached at [email protected])