With this very tiny object
not visible to the naked eye, nature has once again given the global community
a rude awakening. In this, nature was also kind enough to make this visitation
call firstly on China, perhaps the only nation on Earth with the capacity, the
regimental discipline, and the science to confront this deadly visitor. In the
process, China has shown the rest of the world how little we are as a human
race.
Nature has given us rivers, seas, the
oceans with their marine life. Nature also gave us the land and the forests
with their inhabitants known as plants, animals, and homo sapiens. But the
human race, which makes up only 0.01% of all creatures on Planet Earth, is
responsible for 83% of the destruction Earth has suffered. The destruction of the
environment has been taking place through unsustainable farming practices,
overgrazing, desertification, and global warming. The signs and warnings have
been there for many years, through heavy floods and mudslides, hurricanes and
tornadoes, bush fires, deforestation and exploitation of land resources without
replenishing the disturbed environment.
It is so easy to disturb, dislodge, and alter the
living habitats of all flora, fauna, and micro-organisms during these processes
that all kinds of plagues, with time, will begin to manifest. My friend, a
physician, Dr. Dike Okwelum, writes that the coronavirus is a large family of
single stranded RNA viruses that could be isolated in different animal species,
which is why this family of viruses is important in both veterinary and medical
practice. They cause illnesses ranging from common cold to Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-Cov) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
(MERS-Cov).
The novel coronavirus, a relation of SARS and MERS, was
identified as causative agent of an unprecedented outbreak of unexplained lower
respiratory tract infection in Wuhan City of China in December 2019 and has
since then become a pandemic causing a wide range of illnesses across the
globe. This condition was subsequently termed COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19)
by the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite vigorous global efforts, the
incidence of COVID-19 as at March 23, 2020, is 371,731 laboratory confirmed
cases with 15,374 deaths globally.
A tiny virus that seems capable of wiping out a
significant population of the world, if not contained, has now disrupted the
world economy. Perhaps if it does not kill one by infestation, it renders one
poverty-stricken by taking away one’s livelihood. We are being told that the
virus came from animals to humans, and now transmission is human to human. What
we have not been told is which animal was the primary conveyor of the pathogen;
this is of interest to us in Nigeria, given our love for bush meat, for a lot
of our citizens may be carriers already. Such knowledge will help one avoid the
animal carriers long before a vaccine or cure could be found.
There is a lot we do not understand about the
ecosystems of our real estate in this world. The fauna and flora of the
different ecological entities like the rain forest, the wetlands, the forests,
the savannah, the Sahel and all water bodies are all different but have
linkages that enhance and sustain a healthy Earth. When any of these linkages
gets broken through the degradation I explained above, the consequences to life
generally, is unknown and unpredictable. We only struggle to understand them
after the fact. Ecologists believe that if all mankind were to disappear, the
world would regenerate to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000
years ago. But if insects were to vanish completely, the environment would
collapse into chaos.
Therefore, we need to tread gingerly in our physical
relationship with our environment, learn how to respect what nature has
bestowed on us. We need not conquer every frontier. Not all are vital to our
survival as a superior species. Borrowing a bit from my recent book, “How
Little We Are”, I dare say that “the ability to see the social, political, and
economic value of caring for our environment appears to boil down to a question
of intellectual humility. As the generations coming after us look forward to
living a better quality of life on Earth, this lack of intellectual humility
will harm us in ways we cannot begin to fathom, as many remain blind to the full
implication of the issues we now face with climate change. We think we know it
all, yet we know not, and thus treat the warning signs and voices of wisdom
about our environment with nonchalance.”
There are so many things we do not know about the
coronavirus. Some countries are already treating the invasion as war and I do
not blame them. The leadership of many countries has come out almost every day
to address the people as it is done during war but what makes this war
different is because of so many unanswered questions about the virus, the
origin, the treatment and the likely vaccine, which may take more than a year
to deploy in order blunt the lethality of the virus. For we Nigerians, please,
do not be fooled into believing that our normally high temperatures will fight
back the virus because there is yet no proof of that. At this stage, leadership
is very important. Therefore, our leaders in both houses of the National
Assembly, the Presidency, and the scientific institutions must come on board
with the right arms to fight this war.
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