It goes without saying that new, stunningly virulent and resurgent illnesses have been escalating around the globe, with alarming intensity, and advancing more rapidly than ever before. This epidemic of epidemics, and now the pandemic of pandemics in the coronavirus (COVID-19) phraseology, not only signal a crisis in human history, but also the tizzy dance of mutual adaptation that we ‘share’ with our microbial fellow travellers. We have got only to blame ourselves for such a horrid reality and also complexity. We have brought the pathogen ‘wolf’ through the door by rendering and disturbing the natural fabric of our environment, while changing our behaviours and, paradoxically, by our ingenuity to increasing the length and quality of our lives without nurturing the nature of our soul.
So, how — and, most importantly, why — have we gone wrong?
In the words of Arno Karlen, PhD, a psychoanalyst, researcher, and author, “for each new disease known to the general public, there are a dozen others; because, the wheels of biological change keep turning faster. The common progression of humans and microbes has accelerated to a frenzied pace. For example, much has been written about AIDS, but far less about other new diseases.” He adds, “our scientific and historical research is fragmented, like pieces of mosaic rarely assembled in more bits and patches. We have been slow to understand that we live in a new bio-cultural era. For decades, we cherished the myth that infectious diseases were fading forever. This was a posture born of inherited optimism.”
Karlen’s words speak of one inescapable truth: about new emerging viruses, such as the novel COVID-19, and its disastrous, cascading magnitude that has brought the world to its feet, aside from increased microbial resistance to drugs. You get the point. Without seeing our larger evolutionary picture, we cannot respond intelligently to challenges facing our health and survival. For thousands of years, since the first hunter gatherers settled in villages, infections killed more people than war and famine. New diseases, as is obvious, do not fall from the sky, or leap from some mysterious black punnet. To paraphrase Karlen, “parasitism and disease are a natural, in fact necessary, part of life. They are fundamental to the existence of everything — from the earliest, simplest organisms to human beings.” Add to this, international travel and technology, our changing diet patterns, clothing, other fads, warped relationships and work-life (im)balance, and you are witness to a hysterical wave of new-fangled epidemics. This has also led to the (re)emergence of a chaotic, also amplified, panorama in the chronicle of natural history of disease retold.
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