This is one of the most profound statements about the human race you will ever come across: “We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us and wealth classified us.” I don’t know the author (I’ve seen it attributed to Susan Boerner, the American artist) but I know one thing: as the entire world comes under attack from COVID-19, humanity is collectively in severe distress and disarray — irrespective of race, religion, class and ideology. We are all in panic mode. We are desperately looking for a solution and we don’t care the race or religion of who finds it. We do not have enough time to be analysing our artificial divides.
Have we ever seen any threat of this magnitude to the human race? Well, in fatality figures, COVID-19 is a non-starter. With 61,000 recorded deaths since December 2019, COVID-19 does not come anywhere near the worst plagues — yet. The Black Death, also called the Great Bubonic Plague, claimed no fewer than 75 million lives — possibly up to 200 million — from 1331 to 1353, a period of 22 years. The Spanish flu infected 500 million (about 25% of world population then) and killed at least 17 million from 1918 to 1920. The bubonic pandemic, which started in China in 1855, killed 12 million — with India alone accounting for 10 million deaths. COVID-19 fatality figures are far behind.
But COVID-19 is slowly destroying the world in a different way. Has there ever been a time in world history when churches, mosques, synagogues and temples were closed at the same time? Has there been any other time when virtually all airports were closed to commercial flights? Has there been any other time when cinemas were shut down across the world? Has there been any other time when we stopped shaking hands? Has the world ever been under a lockdown? Has there been any other time when the rich and the poor, the mighty and the humble, the wise and the stupid, and the genius and the idiot are all running away from the same enemy, an unseen enemy?
In our judgment as human beings, our biggest threats are the terrorists who have held the world by the throat for decades, threatening to bomb us out of existence. In our estimation, our worst enemy is the climate change that could see the world disappear under pressure from ultra violet rays and seas of flood from the melting Polar ice. In our wisdom, our mortal enemy is the arsenal of nuclear weapons that the super powers have accumulated, enough to destroy our planet 10 times over — with plenty to spare. But here we are being chased by a virus that is not visible to the eye. God has indeed confounded the wisdom of the wise and frustrated the intelligence of the intelligent.
No, I am not saying God sent COVID-19 to punish or destroy the human race as some people have sensationally claimed. I am not theologically deep enough to confirm or disprove such claims. And I am not interested in eschatology — the study of the “end of the world”. That is not my problem. But I just keep wondering: with all the scientists in town, with all the health experts around, and with all the intelligence agencies in the world, how on earth did a virus travel unnoticed and unchallenged from Wuhan, China, to all the corners of the earth, killing thousands in advanced societies such as the US, Italy and Spain? In the end, the best of human beings remain imperfect.
Will the world remain the same again after recovering from this devastating pandemic? Again, we do not know yet. But, for now, we know economies are in ruins, jobs are disappearing, poverty is on the rise, and mental illnesses are piling up — across the world. We know that airlines are in a jangling turbulence, banks are battling with loan defaults, commodity prices are hitting the floor, factories are shutting down, exports of vital medications — such as paracetamol and insulin — are seriously hampered, and education at all levels is in the doldrums. I have no capacity to understand the implications of all these for the human race, but I can bet they will not be pretty.
Typically, when epidemics and natural disasters happen to the human race, they are limited to certain countries and regions. The tsunamis, the cyclones, the hurricanes, the earthquakes and the epidemics happen at different times to different nations. We often think earthquakes and hurricanes are punishments from “God” for the sins of the Western world. We even gloat. Ebola, Yellow Fever, Malaria and Lassa are seen as Africa’s problems. We are often reminded of Africa’s poor and inadequate health systems and how far we are from civilisation anytime we experience these outbreaks. COVID-19 seems to have united everybody. Nobody can gloat or snigger.
In fact, the more advanced countries are bearing the pains more — so far. You see, no health system in the world was designed to handle this mini Armageddon. How many ventilators are there in the whole world? How many hospital beds does the whole world have? How many coronavirus test kits are there on a planet inhabited by seven billion souls? Even if we have all the ventilators, all the test kits, and all the hospital beds, do we have all the doctors and all the nurses to care for the infected? The brutal fact is that the world.
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