New Post at Vocal Media: The Coronavirus Consciousness: If There Was No More Time

Image Source: 4chan.

I have published a new post at Vocal Media about the coronavirus as a lens of crisis, through which we see authorities and ourselves:

The Coronavirus Consciousness
Take Prepping to a New Level: Be Ready to Save Yourself
It might be a good time to look at Stephen King's novel, The Stand (1978); see the graphic novel version here and the movie version (while the link lasts). In The Stand, a killer virus escapes a secret lab at a military base in the United States and it wipes out almost the entire global population. That will not likely happen in reality, unless the coronavirus mutates. But the themes in The Stand are relevant. Mainly, they involve the way a pandemic causes societal collapse. Without an outer apparatus and authorities to define and enforce social order, the crisis brings out the core of who people really are.

29% — that’s the % of the 138 #coronavirus infected patients who are actually infected medical staff in one Wuhan hospital. Almost 1 in 3 patients being hospital healthcare workers is just insane. New case series report in JAMA: https://t.co/j7HPV8j8dp pic.twitter.com/3Hmu3MaE7m

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 7, 2020

1700+ 🦠 infected medical workers is extremely frustrating. Just a few weeks ago, infected healthcare workers was just 14. The brave doctors and nurses fighting in the frontlines, being cut down, are the greatest heros of this epidemic ✊🏼. #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 https://t.co/kN6xZ2E9kc

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 14, 2020

Young Wuhan doctor dies of COVID-19 while fighting the #coronavirus on the frontlines. And China confirms 500 cases in prison population. (Arirang News) pic.twitter.com/HiUWddZoTm

— Max Howroute▫️ (@howroute) February 21, 2020

We keep getting reassured in Australia we are very prepared. I don't see 1,000s of oxygen therapy resources made available in the event of an outbreak in community and in our big local hospital we have only two negative pressure isolation rooms. #coronavirusaustralia

— Phillip Ma (@PhillipMa6) February 7, 2020

Source.

One of the things I discussed in the Vocal Media article was the toll taken by the virus on medical professionals. COVID19 engulfed them in Wuhan within seven weeks. There are reports and leaked calls from medics in the Wuhan hospitals that many - if not most - doctors and nurses are infected. We do not know enough about the disease yet to know if it comes back for a second or third wave. But infected people can become reinfected (it is possible that the disease goes dormant and flares back up, and infected people appear to recover, but never do and remain infectious). That is why we may face a future where hospitals, doctors and nurses are initially swamped, then unavailable.

Extreme conditions lead to extreme measures. This is the type of unconfirmed information circulating on Chinese social media. China has finally crossed the line. (25 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

The same concern goes for governmental authorities. Within one week, three Iranian MPs with fevers sat at a closed parliamentary session with the rest of the Iranian government. On 22 February 2020, Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini was hospitalized in Bratislava with an upper respiratory infection and fever and has cancelled all his upcoming appointments. This happened after he attended several meetings with world leaders. His office denied he has contracted the coronavirus. All it would take is one asymptomatic politician or bureaucrat to attend one top-level meeting. It is not hard to imagine what could happen.

Coronavirus outbreak: Iran health minister appears ill at news conference before COVID-19 diagnosis (25 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube. Subtitled version here.

There are ways for individuals to face these circumstances now in a frame of mind that will make things turn out for the better. Every person has a chance now to change the course of collective future responses by strengthening inner resolve in a moment of soul-searching. I made the following observation in the Vocal Media piece:

"In this epidemic, people can and will disappear, and you will just not know what happened to them. Whether that is due to infection or oppression, you may never find out. If you need to track people down, to say what you need to say, or anything else, now is the time to do it."

The virus has emerged out of a world that was filled with shortcomings. It can push us now to address those shortcomings, starting at the micro level. We should all consider what we would do if there was no more time - not in panic - but because this is a watershed moment. At that watershed moment, we have a chance to improve general circumstances by becoming less passive, less dependent on authorities, and by connecting to reality and other people, without judgement, in a more awakened and aware way.

Are there old friends or family you should to contact? Who would you call? Or write? Do you have apologies to make? Do you need to tell someone you love them? Do you need to settle scores or resolve problems? Do you have fears to conquer? What are your real priorities? Is there work to complete?

In that spirit, I may make some related posts at my other blog, The Dragonfly, in coming days.

Reckon with these completions now, in the best of senses and with the highest of intentions, and perhaps a vaccine will be developed in good time. We may wake up and everything will return to normal, and perhaps the world will be a better place on the other side of crisis.


See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.