We have not heard the last word yet about the origin of the Coronavirus in our time. Countless conspiracy theories have flourished since its advent over a year ago. Some go as follows:
That it is one of the plagues lined up by God to herald the end time; that it is a natural disaster taking its turn in the teleological order of events 100 years after its predecessor, the Spanish flu of 1918; that it is the expression of displeasure by God towards a sinful digital world, deftly subverting the natural order of thinga; that it is an ingenious strategy by the West to forster the agenda of the eugenics to limit world population; that it is the effect of the emissions of the 5G technology being installed in Europe, Asia and America; that it is the conspiracy of Bill Gates along with other frontline billonaires with pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer to install chips in people’s bodies through vaccinations. And so on and so forth.
The discussion of these theories on CNN earlier this week by Sunjay Gupta must have given rise to the World Health Organization’s attempt to clear the air. Yestetday the WHO specifically said there was no evidence to prove that Covid 19 virus was manufactured from a laboratory in China as some American scientists seem to be suggesting. Rather, the virus may have been transmitted into the humans by bats.
Man is not God, but man plays God. Man is not the creator of the world; but man recreates the world. Man is not omniscient, but man is scientifically sophisticated enough to know how the universe works.
There are two tendencies at work in the human mind all the time. The first is to contemplate with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of nature as created by God. This is the realm of the arts. The second tendency is to investigate the hidden laws of nature, the root causes of our otherwise complex world. This is the preoccupation of the sciences which has progressively tried to prove itself right or current by cancelling or altering earlier discoveries. This process has its collateral damage on the environment and has often put man in conflict with other natural elements, and in this case the birds. The Covid narrative instantly makes the bats culpable in our quest for scapegoats.
But come to think of it, there’s hardly any lovelust between human and birds. The birds appear to us as benevolent creatures but in the end play on the humans or are prime creatures for sacrifice. The first bird sent by Noah after the flood reneged on its assignment, went its way feeding on rotten carcasses of sinners. The dove was sent next and it came back with a cheery news. The dove is naturally regarded as a peaceful bird just like the Albatross. But the humans don’t care about any peaceful or good bird. They kill at will. They use the vulnerable chicken for sacrifice. They kill fouls everyday without giving a thought about their familiarity with us.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, the sailor thoughtlessly kills the Albatross, the benevolent bird that keeps them company in their voyage on the high seas. The ship and its entire crew are engulfed in an eerie disaster. They are caught between “the devil and the deep blue sea” until the other sailors discover the act of indiscretion and end up hanging the dead Albatross on the neck of the guilty sailor.
The other day, two years or so ago, a certain bird, an owl flew into a church hall where a governor was praying and was instantly murdered for its insolence. From this superstitious point of view as enunciated in Coleridge’s poem, it is quite tempting to attribute the incessant bloodletting that characterizes to state to the symbolic hostility between the man and his neighbor, the bird?
However, I’m not sure many people would want to accept this view because it is merely intuitive. Now how about this foray into the scientific world. Mary Shelley wrote her 19th century science-fictionl, FRANKENSTEIN, around the character of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant university science student who creates a hunan specie in his laboratory using specimens of other human parts from the mortuary. This experiment succeeds and a giantic human being emerges, but ironically instead of being grateful to its maker, it gets out of control, kills all of Frankenstein’s family members gradually until it leads him to frustration and eventual death.
This obviously sounds hideous, but we appear to be in the midst of a thrilling tragi-comic story juxtapositioning Creators and their creatures; God and man; Frankenstein and his monster; the Ancient Mariner and the Albatross, and indeed all who experiment with novel ideas and get results that are both anticipated and not anticipated. In our quest for knowledge, it will be naive to imagine that China may not have had any thoughts of manufacturing a virus in a laboratory. Don’t they have both the reason and the capacity to do so?
Furthermore, aren’t we still in the same world where nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are manufactured at very high cost and widely used? Last year alone, we are told America budgeted $800 billion on military hardware, research and personnel. The same year, Nigeria had a total national budget of a paltry $34 billions. This means that America’s military budget in one year alone approximates to Nigeria’s national budgets of at least 23 years. Who says there’s any morality about the destruction of this world?
Covid 19 might appear to be a huge Albatross today not only on the neck of the recalcitrant China but to all the nation’s of the globe. But it is more appropriate to say that it is our world’s capacity to use science and technology to destroy itself that should blame.
The Chinese can only be viewed in the same way as the inventors of the AK47, the Russians. They may not need to be linked directly to the bandits of Zamfara or Sankera, but their technological ingenuity has created a terrorist Frankenstein monster that is fighting hard to diminish our country.
Let’s all pause a while and think about how we can take advantage of the knowledge of science to reconcile humanity and other elements of the nature so as to restore our sanity.
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