The interrelation between human, nature and pandemics

Pandemics are not just a force of nature. They sometimes arise out of nothing, but usually are the result of humans and their relationship with nature. It is quite tempting to see how a virus comes to us as a hostile force, arises from the depth of nature, confronts us and then we need to protect ourselves against that. History shows us that pandemics have always played a role in human development, as they often exposed fault lines running through society. 

When the pandemic hits and the aftermath of the pandemic become clear, then we are left with an exposure of the fault lines, developments that were already at play before the pandemic hit. The pandemic does nothing but bring them to the surface and initiates a process of change through which societies are forced to reflect upon themselves and perhaps make the changes necessary.

COVID-19 is something that we have never experienced before. The total closure of places in countries in public life, lockdown’s social distancing. All those concepts are new for many of us, even though in the response to the Spanish flu. Even though it is new for many of us in our generation, there have been many warning signs (not COVID) of other potentially lethal diseases that perhaps didn’t spread as quickly as COVID has done, hit us in the last few decades such as Avian flu (1997) and flu strain of H1N1 in 2009, the swine flu potentially even more lethal.

This article further explains the following:

• History of Pandemics
• The Economics of Diseases
• Industrial Farming and Diseases
• Destruction of Natural Ecosystem
• Lesson Learnt from the Pandemics

The way we interact with our environments, organize our food production, interact with the animals that we bring under control; they are all factors that need to be reflected upon. There is no long-term solution in the face of this pandemic; if we are not willing to consider these structural changes, it is almost like climate change, something which faces all of us.

This article has been fully published in a web magazine named InfoRanjan.