By Altamash Hussain Khan
Well the year 2020 has been an interesting year for the human civilisation of the 21st century, and the year just began, Homo sapiens have faced many outbreaks before Covid-19 in the past and we did kind of survived it all. From plagues to wars to famines, and how we managed to survive it all? One might ask, and it was by our unique way of cooperating in a large number. According to Yuval Noah Harari analogy in one of his best seller books explained how a single monkey has a better chances of surviving on a deserted island as in compared to a single human being on the same island, but the chances of survival drastically changes when we start increasing the number of population for both the species, and the events in the past provides significant proof for the same analogy. That when large number of humans starts working towards the same goal and aim, the probabilities of humans wining against the problem increases significantly, and one of the prior reasons of humans coming out with flying colours were exchange of information between us, the major difference between homo sapiens and other species on earth is our capability to process information differently from our next counterpart, someone sees the glass half full, someone on the other hands sees the glass half empty, and then there are people like Mr. N.D.Modi who sees the glass is half full of water and half full of air, however the main point to notice in all the scenarios mentioned above was the information of the glass and something in the glass, and the sharing of information has never been this easy ever for our ancestors. If we see the Google trend history of past few months the top 3 most searched things on the Google one would see 1. Social Distancing followed by 2. Flatting the curve and then by 3. Herd immunity.
The exchange of information over such a large population has been the major point for the humans to fight against the outbreak of the Covid-19 outbreak, one could surely see and imagine how things would have been different in the past if the information was to widely available during the past epidemics and pandemics, but one should not try to change the past or imagine how the scenario would have played out in the past if we changed X or Y variable in the past however one should see the past and learn from that, how Spanish Flu, would have turned out if the countries were more open to share the information between one another but they had different priorities like wining a war but it’s of no use to point fingers to them now, what we can do is learn from their mistakes, the share of information from one county to another did helped the counties to control the outbreak to a level, however one could always see how things could be different if X or Y variable would change.
A lot of scientists believe that the Covid-19 might be more deadly than the Spanish Flu, Spanish Flu estimated took life of 50 million people all around the world and infected 500 million people around the world and it’s said that the average population in early 20th century (1900) was 1.6 Billion people, so 1/3 of the whole of world population was infected by Spanish flu, in 1918. 1 out of 3 was infected by the virus and 10% of the people who were infected died.
Estimated population of the world in 2020 is 7,794,498,739 according to the worldometer website. We can’t even imagine how the world would have been if humans were ignorant of the covid-19 virus and dealt the situation as they did during the Spanish Flu.
Let’s take in consideration how the world was back in 1918, the Science was growing up and technological advancement was at rise, but superstition was at it’s peek , taking about the superstitions one would say they are no more but are they? No more?
We thought these superstitions are dead now but are they?
Recently a man killed another man to satisfy the God he worship. Maybe what he was doing was correct according to his mind, and maybe what a lot of other people did in past to satisfy their Gods during the past pandemics was correct too according to their mind and minds of many but now we know it’s not.And we can’t keep the record of how many people were killed or scarified by humans to please their own divine Gods during the past pandemics.
As advancement of technology and science we at a level did managed to deal with this scenario in a more matured way, but human kind should not stop there, we sure did saved a lot of people getting scarified and the exchange of information did helped to make people understand this as a virus and not the end of world or a punishment form the divine, and getting them infected by the virus or infecting others, but we should not stop there , this is definitely not the last virus that we will ever face, there will always be another virus right next to the corner, we did leaned a lot from our past mistakes, we understood that the country is more than just, GDP, or its economy, we realised that the people of within the boundaries of a nation make it a country, yes we will stand back and start walking again, like we always do, we will have musical events, and we will get out on the street to stand for what we believe in, we will enjoy that cup of tea from our local vendors and will live long enough to tell our next generation how we survived the summer of 2020. And as the lockdown has been lifted up and as slowly humans are returning back to their old life with a pinch of social distancing and a mask around their face, with a sense that we are more than our fancy job title or the money in our bank account. And that the people of a county is indeed one of the most important asset of a country , not even a single county around the globe allowed it’s people to fight this virus alone, the lockdown seems like the most logical step to take to flattening the curve, rather than getting all of them infected and allowed the country to reach the peak of its infection cycle, and let the concept of herd immunity kick in, rather than everyone sat back at home, and allowed the doctors, and the scientists find a way to fight the virus, this fight did managed to point out the flaws, and loopholes in our systems , but a bad is better than the worst, but humans should learn from the mistakes they did in 2020 so maybe the next time we are hit with a virus like this maybe we can deal with this situation in a good or a better way, rather than a bad way, governments and citizens all around the world should take a step back and really think about their priorities?
Yes humans possess the power to eradicate a whole county of the map of the world and its citizens too, we all have quite strong stand against terrorism, because they tend to kill us and there are anti- terrorism squads around the globe, but we can’t provide basic safety gears to the people fighting the worst enemy of the human kind, yes terrorism is bad it kills people and so are viruses, why is it hard for the nations to see both of them equally dangerous, we sure have anti- terrorism squads, but maybe it’s a perfect time to have an anti-virus squad too? Whose only priority should be to protect the human kind from another deadly attack like this one, because unlike 1918 we now have the technology, power and resources to establish a front like that. But do we have the will..?