V for Virus and Vaccine
The collective experience of humankind has been fundamentally affected by a singular event — the outbreak of Covid-19. The suffering wrecked by the pandemic is hard to imagine — we have had almost 200 million people infected by the virus and over 4 million people losing their lives. Even harder to imagine are the many secondary and tertiary effects - lost livelihoods, lost years at school, lost medical care for other ailments, lost human touch, lost pain of loss, … And we have almost zero clue what the effects over time would be.
But I don’t want to go forward, not yet. I want to think about some questions for now.
What exactly did we face? Well, we faced the virus - a biological tininess that upheaved our medical systems.
And how do we avoid facing this again? Well this is also clear, we vaccinate to build herd immunity. That should do it.
Indeed this is what our thought leaders forewarned us - viruses are coming, get the vaccines ready.
I don’t quite agree. I don’t think the primary pandemic we suffered was of a virus. Neither do I think that vaccination is the panacea we are all in need of.
What was the virus?
We faced a pandemic of misinformation. To understand this one needs to invest time and effort to have the right information - which has been documented here and here.
What was the misinformation we faced? We, as the human race, did not know for weeks that a virus of this kind had started infecting people in Wuhan, China. We then did not know for months that human transmission had begun, even after world bodies investigated the issue. We then did not know for almost a year that scientists who categorically told us that the virus did not leak from lab were only stating a “working hypothesis”. We also did not know for years that dubious gain-of-function research on viruses are routinely approved through organizational structures crossing national boundaries. We did not know anything meaningfully important to not have to face the virus.
When we did face our virus, our healthcare workers were our front-line soldiers. My heart goes out to the hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses who overcame human frailties of bodily and emotional tiredness to salvage who they could through this crisis.
But when we faced misinformation, who were our front-line workers? The government, the scientists, and the media. Who amongst these measured up to the crisis?
Our governments, whose singular goal it is to ensure welfare of their masses, did not measure up to the crisis. Indeed one government is directly complicit in this biggest tragedy of human kind in recent times. And most other governments have not had the wherewithal to even point this out.
Our scientists, who are vocal purveyors of the truth, did not measure up to the crisis. Some intentionally misled, most were indifferent, and a few were silenced. It took those outside the establishment to point that the science does not add up.
Our media, which now finds synonymy with activism, did not measure up to the crisis. Top media outlets have with relative ease changed their positions, while still doing measurably little to correct the wrongs they caused to public perception. Again, it took those outside the establishment to show that the right facts are not out there.
In essence, we as a human race suffered and continue to suffer because we faced the virus of misinformation and our frontline soldiers against misinformation did not measure up. And if we do not recognize this true malaise, we will not find the real cure.
What is our vaccine?
Perhaps we only need the vaccine - a pharmaceutical innovation which when ingested by sufficient number of people would bring all this misery to an end. There is absolutely no doubt that vaccines are the best bet we have now and that we should put all effort to get it to the most number of people today. But a ladder to get out of a pit we fell into should not be confused with the right vision required to avoid falling into pit in the first place. Indeed, these vaccines provide no immunity against the real virus of misinformation.
So what do we need? We need to ensure a majority of us have activated knowledge. Knowledge of course comes from education - that fundamental lever by which change can be brought about in individuals and thus by extension to communities. Also knowledge needs to be activated - many of us were busy perhaps buying bitcoin or watching Netflix as a pandemic unfolded around us. And the less fortunate ones amongst us were fighting the daily battle for survival. Consequently, the governments, scientists, and media were not held accountable for failing to stand up to misinformation.
Herd immunity does not come about when a certain fraction of us develop antibodies. The real herd immunity occurs when a substantial fraction of us are operating with activated knowledge. When we are able to see through the broader trends instead of being animated by trivialities. When the powers of technology do not overwhelm us with sensory experiences but instead empower us with insight and empathy. How else can the glorified story of democracy ever come to bear?
We are in an age where rightfully the death of a single person under a policeman’s knee or the battle for 6,000 square kilometers in Palestine draws the attention of us all. Our hearts go out for the human suffering and we activate social, cultural, and financial bonds to set things right. Why does that not happen when we are talking about hundreds of millions of people across the globe being affected by a pandemic which may well have been caused by an engineered virus developed as part of dubious research on viruses funded by governmental bodies without necessarily the highest bio-security?
We are living in an age of information, a lot of information. Managing this deluge needs careful attention. We as a people have to decide what to attend to. We cannot afford to relinquish that choice to establishments, for it can lead to pandemic after pandemic with us not knowing either what the virus is or the vaccine.