There is no such thing as more or less evolved. An organism is as evolved as it needs to be to survive in its given environment. If the environment changes, it adapts. If not, it dies.
This fact, however, remains oblivious to most. People tend to think of themselves as being at the top of some imaginary evolutionary ladder. That we are somehow biologically superior in form to other animals. The human species has indeed achieved remarkable things. Things that our four-legged, finned, or protozoan housemates could never have conceived: from supercomputers to vaccines to theories of the universe. We feel immensely powerful.
As our power sufficiently expands, we somehow delude ourselves into believing that we are the masters of nature. Suddenly, something emerges to remind us of our limits: COVID-19.
As the virus swept the planet, it overwhelmed healthcare systems, severely disrupted critical supply chains, and exacerbated great power competition between rival states. 2.59 million people are dead (thus far), not to mention the countless more who lost family members or their livelihoods. In May 2020, President of the World Bank David Malpass estimated that as many as 60 million people could be pushed into “extreme poverty” due to the pandemic. The World Bank’s most recent projection is now almost triple that figure. Rates of depression and anxiety have risen to alarming levels, while the virus has created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness and substance use.
Hope, it seems, lies just over the horizon. Vaccines are being distributed, and the cheers of triumph over the coronavirus become increasingly audible. From Jerusalem to Wellington, governments are signaling that victory is near.
After all, as of March 7, Israel had inoculated almost 4.96 million people, around half its population. It plans to vaccinate the majority of its population by as early as April and has already opened its economy. Meanwhile, New Zealand managed to keep the virus at bay with strict border closures, hard lockdowns, and rigorous testing regimens. The island nation has since been lauded for its exemplary [early] response. There too, vaccines are already being rolled out.
Developing countries with limited resources have not fared as well. These nations lack the basic safety nets and support systems that readily exist in the developed world. Overstretched healthcare systems, coupled with a lack of access to basic essential services and medicine, have compounded the effect of COVID-19. In northeast Syria, where healthcare provision is already inadequate, a mere 26 of the 279 public health centers are fully operational. While in Mumbai, the strained medical system is leading to deaths that are not even related to the virus.
That the entire African continent has suffered fewer recorded deaths than just the UK alone has puzzled many observers. But as Philip Schellekens and Diego Sourrouille explain in their Brookings analysis, “demographic diversity confounds the numbers — most notably, the elderly are more vulnerable to the virus.” They add that “accounting for age- and COVID-specific mortality patterns would tell us a radically different story.”
Even if Africa was spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic in terms of cases and deaths, the continent’s economy has not been as lucky. According to the International Monetary Fund, the economic damage and health costs caused by the pandemic have left Africa needing $1.2tn over the next three years to recover coronavirus-related losses. Meanwhile, conflict, hunger, and poverty continue to rise.
While battles are certainly being won in countries like Israel, New Zealand, and elsewhere, the war is far from over. Most developing countries lack access to vaccines, and it will take years before they inoculate their populations. According to a Bloomberg database of COVID-19 shots globally, it will take the world as long as seven years to inoculate 75 percent of the global population with a two-dose vaccine. Rich countries are likely to bounce back quicker, leaving their developing friends lagging even further behind.
We still have a long march ahead of us.
As we start to pick up the pieces of a shattered world, we must resist the allure of regressing once again to our most primitive narcissistic tendencies. Those that lead us to believe that we have supreme control over the forces of nature. If we fail, it will almost certainly invoke complacency. And, it is this very complacency that could well lead to our eventual demise. That is, when the next catastrophe arises and we find ourselves again, ill-prepared — or worse: unable to adapt.
