Covid, Hubris, Nemesis .......

Covid consternation, Covid confusion, Covid challenges, Covid and Church, Covid catastrophe.

How did we start with Covid? Where do we go with Covid? Where will Covid lead us? How will Covid end?

Impossible questions. It is fairly clear that it Covid has been handled badly. It is also clear that the fudge has resulted from a Government with its eye on a very different ball. Get Brexit done might, on reflection been better expressed as get Covid done.

But no! So now we find ourselves with a problem that won't go away, won't retreat, won't retire.

Chris Whitty the Chief Scientific Officer has already strayed from the official path by suggesting that even in the winter of 2021 we might be in some form of lock down.

A thousand deaths in a day! More than Australia has had all year, and the next day the number rose to 1300 and the Mayor of London called Covid a. major incident, and we are now being encouraged to behave as though we have the virus. Covid is a pandemic that we are learning to live with because it's not over yet.

So how do we view it, how should we view it?

Friend or foe?

For myself I sense that it is neither. It is a Virus, programmed to survive, it mutates to achieve its purpose which is survival, so if we seek to control its transmissibility, it mutates and becomes more transmissible, it is in the nature of the virus.

I have taken part in the Office of National Statistics survey, I have been frequently and routinely tested and so far I am fortunate that I have not yet tested positive for the Virus.

I wear my mask, I socially isolate (although I prefer spatial isolation!), I try to keep myself apart from the  people (at least 2 Metres) Hands, face, space!

But what does the Virus mean?

What should we be thinking about its presence amongst us?

I find myself somewhere on a spectrum from, aah, Spanish Flu, lots died, but the Flu ended, many survived, herd immunity was achieved and now we live with the day to day consequences of the Spanish Flu during which in 1918,  more people died than lost their lives in the 1914 - 1918 War. Now there are vaccines aimed at the older and more vulnerable, but lives are still lost to Flu each winter, yet somehow, we have learned to live with that.

My Mum was born in 1917 and my Grandparents lived through the Spanish Flu epidemic. Survivors!

That is at least one end of the spectrum. Have we overreacted with lockdowns and general panic? Have we sacrificed the economy? Should we have reacted more along the lines of Sweden?

I guess we'll never know.

At the other end of the spectrum is a general sense that what we are facing is an existential crisis. The world as we know it is ending.

Politics are in crisis, capitalism is in crisis, the economy is in crisis, society is in crisis, the church is in crisis, so at this end of the spectrum lies the question will we ever recover from Covid?

It is an unsurprising coincidence that as the right wing press has grown in influence so both in the UK, the European Research Group has promoted Brexit as the only way to achieve sovereignty, whereas in practice shared sovereignty, living collegially, convivially, as individuals and nations is a way of establishing and maintaining peace.

The current tragedy unfolding in the USA where the subtext of the drama that the election was 'stolen' with its implicit suggestion that the votes of so many of those who voted democrat were somehow 'invalid' and so the election became the main theme, played out against a background of so many dying and Covid somehow dismissed as a hoax.

Somewhere along the spectrum of normal to abnormal I take a small byway to reflect on Malthus, whose view was that populations are self correcting, when things get out of balance, corrections are made, via War, Famine, Plague or Pestilence.

Malthus was a clergyman and an economist and he argued that populations grow exponentially unless controlled, as for happened in China and to a lesser degree in the UK by limiting Child support payments, however Malthus cautioned that other resources are largely linear and this disconnect means that over time populations exceed the supply of available resources and will then die off.

Whilst Governments can encourage or prevent population growth by means of political interventions, taxation or financial support or legally imposed restraint, in practice it is more likely, almost inevitable that other checks will come into play leading to higher rates of premature death which has been termed a Malthusian catastrophe: disease, starvation, war or Covid 19 a 20th Century form of pestilence or plague.

And things are, clearly, out of balance in this part of the 21st Century.

Our attention is called to the disappearance of species. David Attenborough has been drawing our attention to this for some years now, and Greta Thunberg has become the distinctive voice drawing attention to global warming.

The identification of Covid in its first mutation is well documented, wet markets in Wuhan, cross species contamination and now the virus is here, well established amongst us and its desire for survival reflected in its ability to mutate.

Now it is 50% to 70% more capable of being transmitted from unsuspecting host to unsuspecting host than when first diagnosed, the numbers now affected are increasing exponentially and the end, far from being 'in sight', is being pushed forward into 2021 with no clear parameters or anticipated end point in view.

Even if we do manage to contain and control the virus the question remains will normal ever be normal again?

What indeed will ever be normal again?

My sense is that normal will be living cheek by jowl, shoulder to shoulder with this Virus and then, who knows when, a new pandemic will appear, will burst upon a suspecting world and we will not be ready for that either.

Herodotus was the great, the first great Historian, and it was Herodotus who coined the the phrase 'after Hubris, Nemesis'

We are a hubristic peoples, nationally, internationally, locally, globally, we have the answers, we know the questions, no-one can tell us anything, we wipe out species, we destroy our planetary home and we fail to recognise the consequences.

Hubris, Nemesis!

And now we have Covid our very own hubristic creation our nemesis.

So we face an existential crisis which is very much of our own making. We cannot blame the animals we destroy, we cannot blame the forests we fell, we cannot blame the fields we over crop!

It does seem to me that Covid requires of us that we raise our hands in confession of our responsibilities, we are witnesses to our own Nemesis.

It is the result of our Hubris, nothing less, nothing more ........