Smell the Roses While You May (The Bandicoot — Leaner and Nosier than the Ferret)
Yes, I know I have written of my reluctance to enter the debate on the you-know -what; my reason being, the whole commentariat is totally given over to it. It seemed to me, that we should not let this pandemic totally dominate our human discourse. Surely other things are happening. For instance, the crime rate must be down; very hard for burglars to operate, pick-pockets etc. car thieves. Governments will soon have to make special allowance for distressed petty crooks. Has anyone given any thought to out-of-work Women of the Night?
In Australia I heard this: one unexpected minus is; we can’t hide — the Jehovah Witnesses now know we are all at home!
Seriously though folks, this is not the first time we have been faced with a pandemic, and I’ve been thinking we maybe should be looking at comparisons, to help us gain insights, put things in some perspective. We are not only threatened physically, are we; fear itself is an insidious enemy. The most recent epidemic was of course the SARS.
So I thought to have a look at this one. To my surprise, I discovered this 2003 epidemic was also caused by a so-called corona virus.
It seems the word ‘ coronavirus’ is used as a blanket term for the illness — (covid-19)- that is now rapidly spreading around the world. Here is a run-down of the differences as explained by the World Health Organization.
Coronavirus is, in fact, the name for a family of viruses that also include the common cold, and influenza. Many strains of coronavirus are mild and have been known about for some time, while others are more severe — namely Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and also Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Both were new this century, with SARS affecting Asia in 2003, and MERS first identified in 2012. The so-called covid19 strain that has caused such global disruption this year is new to human beings. The scientific term for this this particular strain is actually SARS-CoV-2
As I researched, a big surprise was that the new coronavirus appears to be actually less deadly than SARS, which killed around 10 percent of people who became infected. The SARS outbreak was contained within about six months, while the COVID-19 outbreak is only a few months old at this point. Even more potent, approximately 35 percent of reported patients with MERS died, but there were significantly fewer cases than either SARS or COVID-19 during that outbreak. From this I guess we can extrapolate that although less deadly as such, covid-19 seems to be more contagious.
So what about influenza? Most people are aware of the so-called Spanish flu, which killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million in the early twentieth century. Today? Seasonal influenza kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year, according to a new estimate. But it’s almost like we have gotten used to this statistic — or at least factored it in. A new disease is always newsworthy, always alarming, eh. Remember Ebola? Aids? Legionaires disease? Whatever happened to Golden Staph? Etc,etc.
And if we go back, the grim reaping of that medieval horror — The so-called Black Death. This was the most devastating pandemic recorded in human history, resulting in the deaths of up to 75 million people globally. in China alone, tens of Millions are believed to have been victims of this plague. Estimates are that at least one third of Europeans perished, perhaps up to one half. Today we know it as bubonic plague, but people then hadn’t the faintest idea what caused it, nor what to do about it. Beginning in the middle of the 14th century, the world suffered several re-visitations before it just seemed to die away. Outbreaks are still occurring, but today medical knowledge, health measures keep this particular monster within manageable bounds.
On a poignant note, some years ago I visited a British friend living in beautiful countryside, on the border of Devon and Cornwall. In the middle of a nearby field, in seeming isolation, stood a fair-sized church. Upon my asking, he told me how the Black Death had completely wiped out a village, mostly built of half-timbered wattle and daub construction. Time had eliminated all trace of the village, leaving only it’s stone-built church.
Also in Britain, if you travel in South London along the Wimbledon Road, there are quite a few small corner parks. These are in fact consecrated ground, never to be built upon, marking the pit burials of untold numbers of plague victims. Many other such pits were dotted all over London. Similar mute reminders of this Terror can be found all over Europe, and obviously elsewhere. Grim stuff, eh, but if we are looking for comparisons…
I guess what I am trying to say, is that we have suffered many pandemics over the ages, mostly helpless, to either identify the cause, nor able to combat it. At least today, we do live in a time where medical science gives us the possibility to survive this one. Yes many will die, but for most, survive it we will. Such mass mortality figures as we are seeing, stun us, it is difficult to take in; it becomes personal when someone we know, family perhaps, becomes a victim. This aphorism attributed to Josef Stalin, himself a callous mass-murderer, is however apt:
‘A million dead is a statistic — one man dead is a tragedy.’
On a brighter note, as governments are forced to close down activity, bring on regimes of restricted human movement, many people find themselves reaching out to each other, to relatives, to sometimes long-parted friends. If nothing else, this is a time for introspection, to re-value much that we have in the oh so recent past, taken for granted. So smell the roses while you may.
Stay well, stay safe.
