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| This says it all. A near empty airport and a lone airline pilot walking towards an empty gate area |
I took the above photo on the day we were finally flying back home. One cancellation of our original flight, one re-booking that went rather well, and we were on the first leg of a two-stop flight. On the first flight, there were six passengers and a flight crew of eight in a 155-passenger aircraft. Two airline crew members were flying as passengers, perhaps just to get to their next airport and plane. The second leg was not much better for the airline when the plane had ten paying passengers outnumbered by crew and other airline personnel traveling with us. That about says, without any elaboration, everything there is to know about how the entire economic system of the whole world is grinding to a forced slowdown never seen before at this magnitude.
That is still the world today, repeated many times over, anywhere there are commercial airports, anywhere businesses - and almost all forms of commerce - are in eerie suspended animation. Not entirely, of course, because grocery stores and marketplaces are open; thank goodness for that. There are vehicles on the road. In short, life is going on, albeit muted and gripped by a new reality that is defined by, and for, everyone caught by the suddenness of a calamity farthest from anyone's preconceived list of worries just weeks ago.
Of course, not often seen, even by today's widespread use of news and social media, are the tireless efforts of healthcare professionals and emergency response personnel whose tasks are ever more made difficult, whose ability to keep doing their jobs is the only pointed spear against an unseen enemy. They are the true heroes of a war not marked by exploding bombs or staccatos of gunfire but by the frenetic arrivals of ambulances at hospitals that are now the main battlefield. Every death only accompanied by the silence and lonely vigils of the surviving families because funerals and gatherings of mourners are discouraged.
This takes us to look everywhere for a reason why. This takes us to question the very nature of nature even as we look for Divine protection and spiritual guidance. We ask only why because to ask when it will end is at the moment unanswerable; to ask where the scourge will strike hard next is asking for one much too dreadful to contemplate.
But we can ask this. Why is something so infinitesimally small be so deadly? Why an invisible entity that is not even considered a living organism can end the life of a living being? Why is one so simple as an invisible molecule able to render helpless and vulnerable a trillion-fold more complex organism that is the human body?
First, we look at how small. The first living organism to compare with is a bacteria. Try to imagine this. A virus is to a bacillus bacteria as a tennis ball is to the entire tennis court. And that bacteria can only be discerned by a microscope.
Let's put some more context we can wrap our fingers around. We have measurements. The simplest element - the hydrogen atom - is a mere one tenth of a nanometer (nanometer is one billionth of a meter). The HIV virus is 100 nanometers but way smaller than a single red blood cell which is about 10 micrometers (a micrometer is one millionth of a meter). That means that our one red blood cell is 1,000 times bigger than the largest virus. If the average human is say, 1.6 meters tall and a meter is one billion nanometers, then we can imagine just how staggeringly minute the Covid 19 virus is. This virus is to the human body as a human body is to the size of the sun (and it would take 1.3 million earths to fill our sun). I am not very precise here but you get the picture.
So why? Again, we have some context to fill. The deadliest creature - a living organism - is the mosquito. A tiny organism that we can swat but what makes it deadly is because it is a carrier of many virulent bugs from malaria to dengue fever and several others in between. But a mosquito is prey to other creatures - from fish to birds and other insect eating creatures. So the deadly mosquito has a purpose in the food chain.
Bacteria is not always a bad actor either. In fact, useful bacteria is key to our very own existence. Remove the bacteria that takes up residence in our gut and we don't have long to live; and so do many other living things.
But what is the purpose of a virus? I've always asked that. But I am like many others who also ask why the avocado seed has to be so large? In the age of seedless water melons and seedless grapes I have yet to see a seedless avocado at the produce section. It's a mystery. But that mystery would seem like a simple question compared to asking what purpose a virus has in this world. Other than to wreak havoc on entire populations.
A grain of sand - a non-living material - can irritate the eye so we keep it away but even if it does get into our eye it does not trick our cells to make copies of itself. The virus does. And the virus is very good at manipulating our own cells to use their own energy and vital resources to make exact copies of thousands upon thousands of the foreign interlopers. That is one of the most underestimated mysteries because when we think about it we, in our present form as a species, can claim the top rung of the evolutionary ladder. We are the superior product of creation. Yet, here we are at the mercy of something that is merely a collection of atoms that make up a molecule so tiny and so negligible next to a single blood cell but is able to cause all of humanity to practically stand still.
So, what is the virus really for? Is it just virulent for virulence sake? We are not here to ask what our Creator had in mind but what can be inferred from empirical science is that simple and complex molecules preceded the earliest simple life forms by perhaps several million years. Viruses were around before the first bacteria or amoeba began to exhibit what today we define as life. Anything that is alive must be able to consume nutrients, expel waste products, use energy and make copies of itself, either by simple cell division or procreation. The virus does not do any of that. It uses our cells as photocopy machines, yet why kill the host? Indeed, why kill the very source that makes duplicates of itself? And that's exactly the point because as perplexing as that seems, the virus does not kill everyone it infects. Third paragraph down is where I try to make sense of this phenomenon by asking once more.
Fossil records show that complex life forms emerged from simple ones and almost always, but not true every time, life kept improving as if the goal is to attain not only complexity but a seemingly never ending quest toward perfection. Perfection toward what the species was designed for. For example, the falcon's ancestors did not attain the fastest speed of 200 miles per hour on a dive overnight. Neither did the cheetah's earlier version immediately run at 70 miles per hour. The Creator must have allowed for creatures to keep improving toward specific goals. Predators like the cheetah having to run faster and faster to catch its prey; but the gazelle and impalas did not take it sitting down either. Generation after generation predators ran faster but almost to the same degree of development, prey were running faster too. It had always been an arms race, so to speak, between predators and prey.
So, at the risk of offending many, which does not exclude the highly esteemed scientists and researchers whose business it is to know these things, and since I cannot claim knowledge at their level, not even close, and admitting further that the next sentences I say here are totally unencumbered by any kind of scientific bases or even by simple logical deduction, I will say them anyway. But to hedge a little bit I will state them in the form of a question.
Is it possible that viruses actually helped species, all life forms, to keep improving themselves by causing all the necessary adaptations and mutations so that generation after generation the newest version always comes out better than the previous one. You see, the world had seen several pandemics already - the Bubonic plague, the flu of 1917-18, etc. - but at each time the virulence did not achieve perfect annihilation of human life. Much of the population actually survived, far more than those who succumb. Not only that but life expectancy improved tremendously. When rabies or distemper comes around the animal kingdom, those that survived are far stronger than the previous ones in the face of the next epidemic.
In a way I am advancing a positive spin to this most current calamity and because I do not have the proper credentials, I present this as an eternal optimist would see the glass as half filled, rather than one that is half empty.
I mentioned the mosquito. There is hope, even how slight, that the cure for malaria - Hydroxychloroquine and a related drug, chloroquine - is a potential drug against Covid 19. Perhaps too, we should avoid the handshake forever. After all, the handshake has a dubious origin, if we believe some of the explanations. It was, we're told, practiced between warriors about to make peace by exposing their arms to be empty of a weapon and each holding one another's dominant hand (that is why handshakes are always done using right hands, left handers in the minority not withstanding) as a sign of goodwill. Coughing or sneezing into the crook of our bent elbows and washing our hands the proper 20-second way are the other positives we get. And what prompted us to do this? Covid19!
Obviously, the world will get through this. What is also apparent is that this is not going to be the last one. But then, are we not now better prepared for it? Did we not put an end to polio and small pox? Those were caused by viruses we vanquished.
Isn't the virus no more an agent of creation than each living life form? Lemonade from a lemon, yes, that is right. But what else are we to do. The virus had been here long before the first glimmer of life. It will be here for as long as we are here to ponder and worry about it and perhaps for millennia after we are all gone. Remember, we are still at the top of creation but God is not making it easy and there must be a reason for it.
Soon, we will also go back to the time when entering a bank wearing a mask will be a felony again.
But we can ask this. Why is something so infinitesimally small be so deadly? Why an invisible entity that is not even considered a living organism can end the life of a living being? Why is one so simple as an invisible molecule able to render helpless and vulnerable a trillion-fold more complex organism that is the human body?
First, we look at how small. The first living organism to compare with is a bacteria. Try to imagine this. A virus is to a bacillus bacteria as a tennis ball is to the entire tennis court. And that bacteria can only be discerned by a microscope.
Let's put some more context we can wrap our fingers around. We have measurements. The simplest element - the hydrogen atom - is a mere one tenth of a nanometer (nanometer is one billionth of a meter). The HIV virus is 100 nanometers but way smaller than a single red blood cell which is about 10 micrometers (a micrometer is one millionth of a meter). That means that our one red blood cell is 1,000 times bigger than the largest virus. If the average human is say, 1.6 meters tall and a meter is one billion nanometers, then we can imagine just how staggeringly minute the Covid 19 virus is. This virus is to the human body as a human body is to the size of the sun (and it would take 1.3 million earths to fill our sun). I am not very precise here but you get the picture.
So why? Again, we have some context to fill. The deadliest creature - a living organism - is the mosquito. A tiny organism that we can swat but what makes it deadly is because it is a carrier of many virulent bugs from malaria to dengue fever and several others in between. But a mosquito is prey to other creatures - from fish to birds and other insect eating creatures. So the deadly mosquito has a purpose in the food chain.
Bacteria is not always a bad actor either. In fact, useful bacteria is key to our very own existence. Remove the bacteria that takes up residence in our gut and we don't have long to live; and so do many other living things.
But what is the purpose of a virus? I've always asked that. But I am like many others who also ask why the avocado seed has to be so large? In the age of seedless water melons and seedless grapes I have yet to see a seedless avocado at the produce section. It's a mystery. But that mystery would seem like a simple question compared to asking what purpose a virus has in this world. Other than to wreak havoc on entire populations.
A grain of sand - a non-living material - can irritate the eye so we keep it away but even if it does get into our eye it does not trick our cells to make copies of itself. The virus does. And the virus is very good at manipulating our own cells to use their own energy and vital resources to make exact copies of thousands upon thousands of the foreign interlopers. That is one of the most underestimated mysteries because when we think about it we, in our present form as a species, can claim the top rung of the evolutionary ladder. We are the superior product of creation. Yet, here we are at the mercy of something that is merely a collection of atoms that make up a molecule so tiny and so negligible next to a single blood cell but is able to cause all of humanity to practically stand still.
So, what is the virus really for? Is it just virulent for virulence sake? We are not here to ask what our Creator had in mind but what can be inferred from empirical science is that simple and complex molecules preceded the earliest simple life forms by perhaps several million years. Viruses were around before the first bacteria or amoeba began to exhibit what today we define as life. Anything that is alive must be able to consume nutrients, expel waste products, use energy and make copies of itself, either by simple cell division or procreation. The virus does not do any of that. It uses our cells as photocopy machines, yet why kill the host? Indeed, why kill the very source that makes duplicates of itself? And that's exactly the point because as perplexing as that seems, the virus does not kill everyone it infects. Third paragraph down is where I try to make sense of this phenomenon by asking once more.
Fossil records show that complex life forms emerged from simple ones and almost always, but not true every time, life kept improving as if the goal is to attain not only complexity but a seemingly never ending quest toward perfection. Perfection toward what the species was designed for. For example, the falcon's ancestors did not attain the fastest speed of 200 miles per hour on a dive overnight. Neither did the cheetah's earlier version immediately run at 70 miles per hour. The Creator must have allowed for creatures to keep improving toward specific goals. Predators like the cheetah having to run faster and faster to catch its prey; but the gazelle and impalas did not take it sitting down either. Generation after generation predators ran faster but almost to the same degree of development, prey were running faster too. It had always been an arms race, so to speak, between predators and prey.
So, at the risk of offending many, which does not exclude the highly esteemed scientists and researchers whose business it is to know these things, and since I cannot claim knowledge at their level, not even close, and admitting further that the next sentences I say here are totally unencumbered by any kind of scientific bases or even by simple logical deduction, I will say them anyway. But to hedge a little bit I will state them in the form of a question.
Is it possible that viruses actually helped species, all life forms, to keep improving themselves by causing all the necessary adaptations and mutations so that generation after generation the newest version always comes out better than the previous one. You see, the world had seen several pandemics already - the Bubonic plague, the flu of 1917-18, etc. - but at each time the virulence did not achieve perfect annihilation of human life. Much of the population actually survived, far more than those who succumb. Not only that but life expectancy improved tremendously. When rabies or distemper comes around the animal kingdom, those that survived are far stronger than the previous ones in the face of the next epidemic.
In a way I am advancing a positive spin to this most current calamity and because I do not have the proper credentials, I present this as an eternal optimist would see the glass as half filled, rather than one that is half empty.
I mentioned the mosquito. There is hope, even how slight, that the cure for malaria - Hydroxychloroquine and a related drug, chloroquine - is a potential drug against Covid 19. Perhaps too, we should avoid the handshake forever. After all, the handshake has a dubious origin, if we believe some of the explanations. It was, we're told, practiced between warriors about to make peace by exposing their arms to be empty of a weapon and each holding one another's dominant hand (that is why handshakes are always done using right hands, left handers in the minority not withstanding) as a sign of goodwill. Coughing or sneezing into the crook of our bent elbows and washing our hands the proper 20-second way are the other positives we get. And what prompted us to do this? Covid19!
Obviously, the world will get through this. What is also apparent is that this is not going to be the last one. But then, are we not now better prepared for it? Did we not put an end to polio and small pox? Those were caused by viruses we vanquished.
Isn't the virus no more an agent of creation than each living life form? Lemonade from a lemon, yes, that is right. But what else are we to do. The virus had been here long before the first glimmer of life. It will be here for as long as we are here to ponder and worry about it and perhaps for millennia after we are all gone. Remember, we are still at the top of creation but God is not making it easy and there must be a reason for it.
Soon, we will also go back to the time when entering a bank wearing a mask will be a felony again.
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