COVID19 PANDEMIC – A TRAGEDY WAITING TO HAPPEN

It is very tempting to blame China for the current pandemic but from an ecological standpoint can we hold them accountable? We may never prove that they were responsible but the fact that they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar cannot be denied. But what is also undeniably true is other humans are no less responsible. 

Yes Coronavirus and most other emerging viruses are from our wildlife, but they did not willingly come to the Wuhan wet market to contaminate us. By eating these wild animals, by trading in their body parts and by trading wild species openly in the markets in places like Wuhan, we have invited their diseases and their viruses. 

Despite being the most evolved species in the world we have failed to act intelligently. Our species pillages nature and our fellow species as if there were no tomorrow! And if we continue our own merry way, a day may come where there may be no tomorrow for us. And this will not be the first time for such a thing to happen on our planet.

There have been 5 major mass extinction events in the past in our planet in 540 million years of its life and we may be terribly close to the sixth. In the past these extinctions have occurred because of huge ecological disruptions which in turn annihilated multiple species. The events have been either because of factors external to our planet like Asteroid impact or internal to our planet like major changes in carbon cycle altering our planet’s ecology, volcanic activities, increase greenhouse gases and global warming. This will surely be the first human inflicted self destruction. 

Whether we like it or not, our life on this planet is intimately dependent on how we treat the other residents of this planet. Forests, grasslands, rivers, oceans, and the flora and fauna that call them home are all our living fellow residents and it is our responsibility to take care of them. Clean air, clean water, climate stabilization, healthy food and absolute ban on wildlife products are just non negotiable. If we invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants, and within these creatures so many unknown microbes, bacteria and viruses, we are inviting trouble. Felling the trees, killing and capturing the wild animals for trade of their body parts is surely lucrative to a few but will spell doom for many more.

It is time the world leaders to understand that global biodiversity is vital for our healthy existence in this planet. Plastic in our oceans, chemical effluent in our rivers, toxic contaminants in our soil, noxious gases in our air are all together disrupting the balance of nature. Our exotic food habits need to be tamed down. The consumption of Civets, possibly infected by bats, caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. It was proven but no lessons were learned. Bats from a cave in Yunan, 1000 miles southwest of Wuhan, continued to appear in the wet market in Wuhan and were freely sold. Not just bats but diverse animals and birds, from duck to hen and wild birds of prey are routinely kepf in close proximity and captivity and the innocent domestic fowl also gets infected causing transfer of dangerous pathogens. So you can appreciate this viral pandemic is just being fancifully called novel Coronavirus pandemic. There is nothing novel about it. It was a disaster waiting to happen and squarely because some choices which we human are making repeatedly.

Our ancestors who have passed on to us the great Hindu traditions had always held nature and her inhabitants in very high esteem. Goddess Earth, or Bhoodevi, deserves the reverence of humans because she feeds us, gives us shelter, and provides materials to be used in our daily lives. If we do not take care of her, she will not take care of us. This is something increasingly seen in today’s time where bushfires, melting of polar ice, tornadoes, tsunamis, typhoons and earthquakes are getting increasingly frequent.  And now this virus pandemic is the biological weapon which we have self inflicted on ourselves.