PANDEMIA

to put today’s pandemic in perspective i think it helps to compare it to the last one, the nineteen-eighteen-nineteen influenza just over a hundred years ago. at that time the earth contained one and a half billion humans. the number of people infected with the virus amounted to one in three persons, or about 500 million; the number of deaths was around 50 million. if the figures are adjusted to reflect the present human population of earth, about 7.5 billion, the numbers we can expect from this pandemic look like 2.5 billion persons infected and about 250 million deaths. that would be more deaths than were caused by all the wars of history, and this in just two years.

there is only one reason to presume our outcomes will be much less damaging than these projections and that is our vastly increased knowledge in molecular biology, medicine and science in general. we have a vaccine, something impossible to imagine a hundred years ago. the risk of death in taking the vaccine seems to be running at about one per million. the risk of infection for not having (or taking) the vaccine seems to be about one in thirty.

the fact that some people are trying to equate these risks represents one of the most mindless and stupid blunders in human history. and if large numbers of people refuse to be vaccinated, they represent a considerable risk to the general wellbeing of all the humans of earth, for now and the forseeable future.

when humans fail it is not likely to be a technical failure. we are great at technology. the errors that threaten us are always errors of understanding and intention, philosohical errors. for that the only cure is a more thoughtful and honest education, rather than the indoctrination that so often masquerades as education in this world of competing nation-states.

humans have not come to dominate earth because they learned to compete. all animals do that. humans have come to dominate this planet because they learned to cooperate in increasignly subtle and elaborate ways, and that trend will absolutely have to continue if we are to prevent the next devastation awaiting us on this little blue orb — global warming. it is past time to indulge in nation-states that seek to dominate others — or dominant individuals either. in that light one could view the present pandemic as a rehearsal of what is so shortly to come, a world more ordered and harmonious than humans have so far demonstrated their ability to sustain. and without an early and thorough grounding in logic and a discussion of all forms of prejudice, including especially groupthink and confirmation bias, i don’t think we can do it.