Corona Pandemonium
Malthusian Doom Or ‘Germ War’ Rehearsal?

Bibekananda Ray

The Corona pandemic illustrates, how mankind’s invisible enemies are deadlier than the visible! Its existence among millions of viruses and germs were unknown, as it has never raged before; therefore, its aetiology, diagnosis, prevention and cure are unknown to the medical community of the world. Whatever governments are doing are sincere and admirable but not proving efficacious, casting doubts on current efforts to contain it; they could be mere guesses, based on trials and errors. It is not merely a pandemic but a pandemonium too, in the literal meaning, ‘Abode of Ghosts’. The global toll has exceeded 20,000 and in USA alone, the number infected are close to one lakh. Comparatively, India is on a vantage ground and in West Bengal it is nominal. Here too the government steps like isolation, social distances, quarantine, curfew and lockdown do not seem to be working, as the number of infected is going up by leaps and bounds. The government should emphasise that not every infected patient is not dying; in a couple of cases, it is said to have been cured by malaria drugs but by and large, it remains invincible.

Literally, ‘corona is the “tenuous outer layer of the atmosphere of a star”; the sun’s corona looks like a radiant golden ring around the moon during a solar eclipse. “It is perverse to name such a monster, stalking the earth with a mace after a cosmic marvel. It first came to be reported when half a dozen US soldiers, who had come to Wuhan city in China to attend military games in October 2019 died of mysterious viral fever. Thereafter, when a local sea-food seller died of same symptoms; it was attributed to taking of favourite Chinese delicacies like bats, crab, prawn, weeds etc. Initially, in January 2020 Corona contamination was slow; one lakh were infected in 67 days, then it went up in G P - one lakh more in next 11 days and another lakh in four more days. The symptoms are acute breathing difficulty, high fever, cough and sneezing and other symptoms of normal influenza. Lungs are first infected and gradually, it disables other organs. It is not yet confirmed, whether it is airborne, or infects by touch of surfaces on which droplets of cough and sneeze fall, or by both. The virus, like millions of other viruses on earth, has no life of its own until it sticks on the cell of a living being where it multiplies fast. Under the microscope, it looks like a vicious round red or black entity but is not visible to the naked eye. Truly, as Rabindranath Tagore wrote in a letter home from England in 1979, the mankind surviving so many enemies within and outside is nothing but a miracle.   

Compared to other deadly viruses that stalked the earth, e. g, of Bubonic Plague, Spanish Flu, Swine Flu, HIV, Ebola, Encephalitis and Nipah, corona is a new discovery. Biologists have no answer to the question, why was it moribund so long and what made it wake up and invade human body? Why is it an epidemic in certain countries but of low incidence in others?  After starting and raging in China, it mysteriously struck far away Italy which has no significant commercial or cultural link, or geographical contiguity with the communist country. Then it spread, right and left, to two Americas, to eastern and western Europe, Russia, Central Asia, Far East and South Asia.   In Italy, people are shying away from burying the dead; several of them are piled one above the other and removed to burial grounds by military and health vehicles. The wails and the woes of the afflicted and the kin of the dead remind one of a song in Chitrangada by Rabindranath Tagore, “Never before a wailful spring like this had come!” (Rodanabhara è basanta aaseni kakhano bujhi aage”. 

India woke up to the menace in time. Laying aside quibbling on citizenship, CAA and NPR, Modi government’s Health Minister and the Ministry issued warnings to people until Prime Minister launched a 14-hour Janata Curfew on 22nd March, marked by a thanksgiving chorus of claps and cymbals at 1700 hrs. to which people responded joyfully. As no vaccine or medicines were there, the WHO did not suggest any line of treatment. The US government sped up research in its laboratories and pharmaceutical companies; one such company, ROCHE is said to have developed a vaccine which is now on human trial and until declared successful cannot be sold globally tentatively before 18 months. In India doctors and virologists should have decided lines of treatment in tele-conferences but did none, apart from interviews on TV channels. Calling it “the Third World War”, the PM announced a three-week continuous; lockdown, until midnight of 14th April 2020 which apart from stray violations and inconveniences is going on well. In the last few days, the number of afflicted has not diminished; on the contrary on 25th March more than 100 cases of detection were reported and admitted by the Health Ministry. Doctors explain, Corona infection takes 10-15 days (incubation period) to manifest; therefore, the effectiveness of social distancing and continuous lockdown will not be known before one week. 

While the monster rages with no goddess Durga around to slay it, the media is engaged in mooting theories or hypotheses of its origin. Causes or origins of other deadly viruses have not been found; microbiology is as mysterious as the human body. One theory that is now going the rounds of media is an accident in Wuhan Institute of Virology which is China’s                                               premier research microbiological facility, close to the epicentre of Corona outbreak. Beijing made massive investments in this new genomic research institute. Wuhan’s fabulous seafood hub is nearby. Although has neither confirmed, nor denied and the Communist party is trying to suppress it, there was an accidental leak in the facility and the man-made virus manqué got wings and began its global flight, rather like the alleged leak of the HIV virus from a US laboratory in 1985.

Another theory- my brain wave- is economic, propounded by a British cleric and scholar, Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) who hypothesised that Nature has a way of reducing the pressure of a runaway population by eliminating excess burden through famine, deluge, bonfire, earthquake, pestilence and epidemic. In his “Essay on the Principles of Population in 1798, he proposed two checks to keep population on an even keel- preventive and positive. Under preventive check, population can be reined if many people remain unwed and therefore, without children. The other is Nature’s own, by unleashing natural calamities mentioned above. He predicted that population (100 crore at that time) would outrun food supply and lead to famine and racial conflicts over the earth’s limited resources. Although he was criticised for this negative proposition, subsequent natural calamities have proved what is called Malthusian catastrophe. Nature cannot be punished but if China is proved the culprit, it can certainly be hauled up by the USA or the UN and made to eat the humble pie.  

Not love but fear of Corona and resolve to defeat it have united the world, riven by racial rivalry nationalist complex and economic might; some eight billion people now stand on the brink of death eyeing an infernal abyss. Apart from human fatalities, now crossed 20,000, the world will stand on the brink of an economic disaster from which it will take years to emerge. Mr. Modi’s dream of five trillion-dollar economy by 2024 will end up as a nightmare and Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman’s declared largesse for the dead and the infected will stare her in the face.

Like death, corona has become a great leveller where the prince is as helpless as a pauper. England’s Prince Charles tested positive; so did the Queen’s personal physician. The queen has left Buckingham Palace. Canadian Prime Minister seems to be recuperating; Corona is no respecter of VIPs. Like all good and bad things in life, the Corona pandemonium will end some day; no viral epidemic is eternal. When finally it bids adieu of mankind, it will leave an important message: let it unite through love, not hatred or rivalry, because as Italian poet, Dante Alighieri saw in a vision at the end of his peregrinations in the Paradise, where within depths (of flames) I saw ingathered, bound by love in one mass, the scattered leaves of the universe”.

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Frontier
Mar 28, 2020