The cruellest month

From the back yard - Dogwood, Cherokee Brave

I initially thought of this coronavirus virus pandemic as somehow antithetical to the lovely Spring weather we're having here in the national capital region. You know, disease and death all around while flowers bloom and abundant life returns to the land. Contradictory, no? Well, no, it isn't contradictory. Just a little egocentric perhaps.

Think about it from the virus' view point. It's just an organism that's trying to perpetuate the survival of its species, like all organisms. Find food, shelter, a cozy place to grow and thrive. Lots of things we don't like are very successful survivors - ants, cancer, reality shows.

Our current coronavirus, the cause of the illness known as Covid-19, seems to have hit upon a pretty successful survival strategy. It has managed to spread around the world in just a few short months, finding a seemingly inexhaustible supply of food and shelter (that is, human bodies). It took our species millennia, even millions of years to do that. Like cockroaches and Asian tourists, this virus looks unstoppable. You've got at least to respect the shear persistence and tenacity of it.

From Today's Washington Post

We're doing more or less the same thing to the planet. We thought our population could just continue to expand and grow indefinitely, devouring the planet's resources as if they were limitless. But the Earth may have some defenses too, just as our bodies do.

Maybe the coronavirus is one the planet's ways of defending itself against a destructive parasite - humanity. Maybe the ecosystem is a self-regulating organism which, though slow, has the ability to adjust to threats and defend against them.

Maybe earth will exterminate us by sending waves of natural disasters and disease at us. Maybe it will just allow the biosphere to become uninhabitable by our execrable, invasive species so that we all die and go away. Or maybe, just maybe, our gorgeous self-correcting system of a planet will find some sort of balance where the virus will kill just enough of us to protect itself from our voracious appetite. Maybe.

I don't believe in grand intent, but I would love to believe there could be undiscovered natural laws that govern such things. Something like the law of conservation of energy that maintains a balance between life and its own tendency to self-destruct. I sure would like to think there's such a thing. I don't see any evidence of it, but who knows? Otherwise, if left to our own devices, it's looking increasingly like our species is gonna have a pretty bad time in the coming days.  

Of course, what seems inexhaustible never is. The virus will eventually run its course, killing some of the hosts and having most of them develop immunity. It will have to mutate and evolve if it wants to survive, adapting to humanity's ability to create antibodies and ultimately medicines that limit its success. I suspect humans will adapt to the earth's limitations and protective capabilities too. At least I'd like to hope so. In both cases, there will probably be a lot of death in the process.

Today's count