Fragile
This Coronavirus thing has given me a lot of time to think, and something to think about. The impact of the Coronavirus has been enormous, and it’s because we human beings are so darn fragile. We’re susceptible to illness — catching it and dying from it — with such ease that we have to go to extremes to protect ourselves. If we hadn’t already learned this lesson from past epidemics (polio, Spanish flu, the Bubonic plague way back in history…and lots of others), the past three months have proven it.
I’ve also been thinking about the secondary effects of the epidemic…mainly the economy. Thinking about businesses shutting down, many of them never to open again. Thinking about jobs lost…millions of them. Thinking about the gazillions of dollars being spent by the government to help us limp through this crisis (who’s going to pay for that?). And I’m dreading that there’s more to come.
Then, while my mind was in this gloomy place, my imagination moved on to other scary scenarios. What if the Internet suddenly quit working? I don’t know…maybe some unfixable computer virus, or something — it’s not that hard to imagine. Where would that leave us? We would regress to the world of the 1980s, which wasn’t so bad at the time, but in hindsight now seems primitive. Our kids and grandkids would go insane in less than a day without their screens, and maybe go on murderous rampages just to have something to do. We would have to communicate with them again, maybe teach them something (assuming we could get them to listen).
What if all the grocery stores suddenly closed? How many of us would survive past the contents of our refrigerators? Probably not many. I don’t know how long I could survive. I think I’d rather starve than trap a rabbit, skin it, build a campfire, cook the rabbit, and then eat it. I did that in Ranger School, in my twenties, and I don’t want to do it again.
And who wants to live without coffee, anyway?
What if some microbe got out of control and mutated into something that eats oil and gasoline. All of our fuel could be gone within a few months. Ninety percent of everything that operates on internal combustion and electricity would suddenly become junk. There would be rusting heaps of cars, trucks, and buses everywhere. Trains, airplanes, and every boat that doesn’t have sails or oars would be…just more junk. I don’t think we’d do very well if bicycles, hiking shoes, and horses were our only transportation. We’d have to cancel that Mediterranean cruise and those trips to visit the grandkids. No more business trips to New York City (well, that one is a blessing). Oh yeah, no fuel means no electricity, so, no Internet (see above).
We humans are so fragile. How have we survived for hundreds of thousands of years? How have we become the planet’s dominant species, with ambitions to conquer the stars? Why didn’t the dinosaurs, the Neanderthals, a sun flare, our murderous penchant for war, or any of those historic plagues, wipe us out long ago?
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Hmmm…could it be that we’re really not so fragile?
Maybe we survived and thrived because we’re tougher than we look. Our big brains make us smart…maybe not wise, but certainly smart, certainly creative. Our opposable thumbs give us the ability to make and manipulate things in clever ways. A saber tooth tiger was a fearsome thing, but he couldn’t swing a club, throw a spear, or gang up on us, yet we could do all of those things to him. Speaking of ganging up, we humans learned early to cooperate…we joined forces and overcame every obstacle, even those we created for ourselves. We’re often argumentative and mean-spirited, but, as fractious as we are, when we work together, nothing stands in our way.
Hmmm…
No, not fragile at all.
Take another look at the Coronavirus. We’re vulnerable as individuals, and we react to that vulnerability with the fear and caution we’re seeing all over the world these days. I think we’re doing what we’re doing because we’re both scared and compassionate — scared for ourselves, and compassionate for others. We do everything we can to avoid even a small number of deaths, even to the point of taking enormous risks with our economy.
But as a species, we’re not vulnerable at all. We’re extremely robust…damn near indestructible. The Coronavirus, when it catches us as individuals, creates a lot of tragedy, killing some of us, often with agonizing deaths. But, as a species, Coronavirus doesn’t kill very many…less than 1% of those who are exposed to it, if we can believe the news. And our big brains, opposable thumbs, and cooperative skills — plus a little bit of time — will enable us, ultimately, to conquer Covid 19. Does anyone really doubt that?
Actually, most of the damage from Covid 19 comes from our own compassion — our refusal to give up even a single life if we can prevent it. We anticipated potential economic problems from the start, and we still don’t know the extent of the economic damage that is to come, or if it will be even worse than Covid 19 itself. But it’s intolerable to us to give up even a single life if we can prevent it, so we do what we can, and we endure the consequences, arguing among ourselves every step of the way, but doing it anyway, because it seems like the right thing to do.
Ultimately, mistakes or no, more deaths or fewer, we’ll get through it, as we always have, emerging stronger than ever, and maybe even a bit wiser.
No, my friends, we’re a lot of things, but fragile isn’t one of them.
