'Time on your hands' has caused consternation in some quarters, particularly if you have a house full of noisy energetic kids bursting with energy but now cooped up on the 10th floor of a city tower block. How they manage, heaven only knows, perhaps they don't bother and the kids go off roaming as usual and without the discipline of a school to attend are inevitably getting up to untold mischief.
The self imposed exile from one another cast doubt on the reasons to leave the house as the places we normally attended closed their doors. The restaurants and pubs the takeaways and the so called non essential shops were forced to close their doors.
There is the real drama, the financial ruin of the small entrepreneur, having no income the expenditures become horrendous, not only the rent on premises but taxes due to the municipality, the stock delivered now unsold, the bills which have to be met. Theirs is the worry of business loans and overdraft extensions, of dreams of a flourishing business going down the proverbial drain.
The overall picture is one of extremes. The people sitting around at home trying to keep themselves entertained whilst on television, the chilling drama of people clinging to life by a thread on a ventilator. The nurses and doctors bustling around the bed in their protective clothing like a scene from some horror movie where an alien force attacks the earth. Of course the virus is not from outer space but a normal pathogen which lies around us. Part of natures complex fabric, viruses have grown and accompanied the the infinite complexity of molecular evolution which make up who we are and. Along with biological micro organisms which are in a constant tussle with our immune system the colony of viruses has also developed. To combat the virus, antigen specific antibodies which lie outside the pathogen (the virus), stimulate the bodies defence mechanism which triggers the immune response. In the case of the corona virus this mechanism goes into overdrive, eventually swamping the respiratory system with too much antibody fluid causing the person to drown in their own protective response system.
The virus is here to stay. Once having skipped the species barrier in China the cat is out of the bag and we must expect repeated crisis, especially amongst the frail with a weakened respiratory system. Eventually a Covid 19 vaccine will be produced although in some cases, (AIDS for instance) a vaccine has still to be found.
It shows how fragile we are in such a hostile biological environment. Darwinian evolution has equipped us with a masterfully protective array of defensive alternatives bolstered by our ingenuity to recognise the makeup of new strains of pathogen and manufacture the substances to help or bodies survive. Our knowledge of the makeup of these molecular bad boys is part of the expense of keeping the labs and the scientists continually on the front foot of research and it's been a feature of our blindness to look for savings in the health system which has led to our unpreparedness this time around. The austerity seekers who prioritise funds for their own means, rather than those for society at large have been caught out big time revealing how reliant we are on third parties to keep us safe. There has to be a reappraisal of the need to cut corners on essential services in this country and our slavish worship on the high altar of globalism where we are in the hands of the innovation of others. We have to retain productive capacity in this country for the essentials and stave off the mantra that price is everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment