All in all, they have always been in the majority. Although not very big and not very visible, they have made their marks on world history. Unlike human kind who generally takes itself very seriously, wearing tie and suit to a room full of plush to discuss the seriousness of the situation, viruses need less words. For the better. After all, words are only the harbinger of what really matters: deeds.
And so it happens that this small group of particles as a collective suddenly pulls the emergency brake to solve a problem that has been daunting above our heads for years. With the development of our brains, we seem to divide problems into four quadrants. In increasing degrees of difficulty, we have short-term problems that are concrete (a broken leg or a flooded kitchen), short-term problems that are abstract (extremely high blood pressure or burnout), long-term problems that are concrete (incurable cancer or litter in the forest) and long-term problems that are abstract (smoking or climate change). The latter category often has the greatest consequences because we don’t notice much if we don’t do anything about it. And that is exactly where the hivemind of the family of Coronoviridae has found a gap in the market.
People, including myself, are hardly aware of the danger of pleasure trips to Rome and Paris with Easyjet. At least, there is a group that is busy, including a bunch of young people, that try to awaken us. But it seems we don’t really want to be woken up. As something for your own good, you never feel like it. We sometimes think about drowning in the reality of the day with urgency as a magic word. Current political leaders even insist: vision won’t get you anywhere, the pragmatist finds a solution for every problem in the here and now and works together with whom it suits him.
There you have it as a white rhino, platypus or summer bee. You live in a time when one species has enough brains to do strip-mine the earth, but has too little neocortex to transcend itself. Our tendency to pragmatically let the problems of today and tomorrow prevail, thereby accepting the massive impoverishment of biodiversity, is worrying to say the least.
But those who are not visible must be creative in their ability to assert themselves. Using the power of the opponent is the best weapon. A pandemic, the outbreak of an infectious virus; a concrete problem with short-term consequences that will hold the ruling species in front of a mirror and force it to humble its fellow inhabitants on this earth. A counterattack from nature that goes viral faster than any fragment of Kim Kardashian.
Air quality over China has never been better, according to NASA. In the operating rooms, our stocks of gauzes, masks and surgical gowns could run out steadily. For the first time, our sustainability project to think about smarter forms of reuse is taking off. If the latest versions of our iPhones can no longer be delivered, we might start talking to each other again.
It is sometimes said that fear is not a good counselor. Unfortunately, the belief in merciful empathy is already a vain hope today. This requires sensory connection. Anyone who shoots a duck out of the air and removes the warm body of organs will eat it later with more respect than who puts a tame copy neatly packed in a blue tray with the self-scanner in his shopping bag. The less something looks like us, the less likely we are to sacrifice our own comfort for the other party. Nature has become a bothersome phenomenon that causes traffic jams with slippery road surfaces and leaves on the train tracks. Nature also seems to understand this, driven solely by the urge to survive. Fear, on the other hand, is the only advisor to somewhat dampen our downplaying spirits.
Since the Enlightenment, a word that only the human species could have come up with, it is the most obvious thing for many people that I think I am therefore and that the preservation of the ego is also the highest attainable in this society. Selfie sticks, Uber and Insta want to give you the feeling that you are a unique creature in this world where it pays to be autonomous, independent and independent. It is almost a Cassandra-like prophecy that the collective (the rubber tree, the chain saw, the Amazon programmer) might be crucial to the creation of your selfie stick that you ordered via an anonymous digital platform.
Viruses are not organisms, they need a host to spread their own genetic material. They are pre-programmed to act according to their environment. They are not consciously aware of this, but nature has determined it so. They also last a little longer on this earth than we do and chances are they will see us perish too. At least, if we think we don’t need them. The corona, literally the crown in Latin, was handed over to someone in the Roman Empire for his services rendered. On behalf of the panda and the summer bee, that name seems entirely appropriate.
This article was published in Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad 6th of march 2020.
