Introduction – and what can we believe?

Previously busy streets are now a lonely place, as people have been compelled to stay indoors. Owners of shops, with the exception of grocery shops, are closing shop, because people are no longer on the streets. Public gatherings with more than ten people are prohibited, and so classrooms have made the move from the physical contact that took place in schools, to virtual contact that takes place online. Language not wanting to be outdone has also introduced new phrases, with arguably the most common being “social distancing”.

All of these put in place, with the single aim of limiting the spread of the virus that was given the name Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2, that leads to the disease known as COVid-19.

It is difficult what to believe, at this stage, as there are conflicting messages on issues such as the origins of the virus, and how it spreads.

This comes as no surprise, as governments, whose duty it should be to protect those within its borders, have on a regular basis come up with policies that have worked against the people they are supposed to protect.

Trying to place any trust on media outlets would be a folly, as the majority of them are owned by a very small group of people and groups¹, whose interests, as should be expected, they are mouthpieces for, a bias that not only conflicts with objectivity, but also tends not to work in favour of the interests of the majority of human beings.

Rather unfortunately, looking for objectivity in science and research, might be difficult too nowadays. The reason being that its practitioners have been put in a situation where the funding that they require to do their jobs, no longer come from the supposedly unbiased pockets of governments, who are supposed to represent the interests of everyone, but more and more from the pockets of individuals and private entities, whose interests tends to work against those of the majority, something that ultimately affects the results are made available to the public².

The suggestion is that there is colour to the information that we receive, which normally washes out to the interest of those with money.

Origins and possible nature

So, there is a problem of how to access information that can be relied on. Bearing this in mind, could it still be possible to make some sense of what might be happening, and importantly the possibilities that the current situation presents?

What the reports suggest is that the virus started in the city of Wuhan in China. A number of questions come to mind, the first of these being the possible origins of the virus. What we are told, at least in the media, is that the virus came from animals.

Though this might be a possibility, it is not the only way that a virus like the corona virus can be spread to humans. There has been in existence a treaty that prohibits the development of biological warfare weapons known as The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons. This came into force in 1975, countries, and as at August 2019 had 183 State parties³ that are signatory to it. Regardless of this, some of those 183 members of the treaty have continued with the development of biological agents intended to be used as weapons.

Added to these two possibilities, when it comes to the possible origins of the virus, is yet another one that was covered in some media. This was the possible link between the virus and the fifth generation of wireless communications technologies, known as 5G. This is a claim that cannot be dismissed, from the simple fact that the public is generally kept uninformed on the impact that technology has on people.

Time, I guess, will tell, what the actual origins of the virus are. The situation is, however, that we have to deal with the deaths and illness that are being attributed to the virus. It has to be a huge relief, again if the reports are to be believed, that the virus is not airborne. Another relief has got to be found in the current fatality rates, which are a little over 4%⁴, with the hope that they remain at that level, or even reduce to no deaths in the near future. This is a relief because there have been viral attacks, like the Ebola virus that ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2002 and 2003, which had a fatality rate of over 90%⁵.

Equal but not equal

If the reports that we get are to be believed, the suggestion is that the virus has been diagnosed in over one hundred and ninety countries and territories⁴. This tells us at least two things, the first being that the virus does not have regard for the artificial borders that we, human beings, have created. The second is that it is testimony of how interconnected our world is today.

One would be forgiven to assume that in this interconnected world, all the technology, that has been, and is being developed, would be available for all of humanity to have access to and use. Rather unfortunately, owed to the way that we have designed our systems, this is not the case, as all of humanity, regrettably does not have this access. Access being restricted to those who have been put in a position to afford them. What this means is that though there might be the technology as well as services available, which could cater for people that are afflicted by the virus, they might not be available to, dare I say, the majority of us.

The main reason for this being that access to services, has been attached to finance. In other words, for someone to get a service, in most parts of the world, there is a demand that they would have to pay some money for it. There would be no problem with this situation, if the money required to get these services, is distributed relatively evenly, as to enable people have the possibility to gain access to the services. This, however, is not the case as there are people, in a lot of societies, who have been put in a position, where they cannot, because of the financial income that they have, afford the services that are on offer. In other words, the existence of financial or economic inequality, restricts some people around the world, from gaining access to the services that are available.

This inequality can be found both within and between countries. For the case of the comparison between countries, there is a tool that is used to measure the monetary value of all the goods and services produced per capita for countries and regions, the Gross Domestic Product, GDP. The nominal GDP figures for 2018, according to the World Bank, put the top country for this nominal category as the United States of America, and the bottom country Tuvalu. The figure per capita for the USA, for that year, according to the World Bank, stood at $20 494 100 000 000, while that for Tuvalu was $43 000 000⁶. What this suggests us that on average, the goods and services for 476 607 Tuvaluans is what is produced for a single person that lives in the USA.

As to the inequality within particular countries, if we take the country with the largest nominal GDP, the USA as an example, the expectation might be that everyone who lives there should have a good quality of life, which would be indicated through a lack of poverty. The reality, though, is quite different. According to the USA’s Census bureau, in the year 2018 over thirty-eight million people in that country, out of an estimated population of three hundred and eight million, in that year, lived in poverty⁷.

With respect to the comparison of income, within the USA, in that same year of 2018, 40% of the population received 11.4% of the country’s aggregate earnings, whilst 5% received 23.1%⁷. As to the actual income, the figures for the year 2016 show that the bottom 20% had an average annual income of $15 600, whilst the figure for the top 20% was almost twenty times more at $280 300⁸.

There is a coefficient or index, the Gini, used to measure the inequality, in the distribution of a wealth within a country. It therefore is no surprise that though the USA is the top country in the nominal GDP measure, it was ranked at number 109, out of 144 countries that are marked for their relative equality, using the Gini index, for the year 2020⁹.

A look at the Gini coefficients taken for a number of countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, from the mid-1970s to the late 2000s shows that inequality, instead of decreasing, has been rising constantly through that time, for almost all of the countries that the report covers¹⁰.

If it is assumed that the primary aim of a government is to ensure that all those that live within its borders have a good quality of life, key to this would be that they all have access, when they need them, to services that are needed to provide them with a good quality of life. Taking into consideration the situation where access to services is achieved through some monetary exchange, one could say that it would be the duty of a government to ensure, through policy, that everybody has enough of an income that would allow them have immediate access to good quality services. Considering this, the rise of inequality, as stated in the OECD report suggests that governments have failed in their duty.

What could be the possible reason for governments failing in their duty to provide a good quality of life for everyone?

I believe that people, like other animals, engage in activities that are intended to bring benefit to those that initiate the activities. Most activities tend also to affect not just those that initiate them, but others too. This means that there is the possibility that there might be activities, which though might bring about benefit to the those that initiate them, might not necessarily bring about benefit to the others whom it affects. When the persistent rise of inequality is seen in this light, a conclusion that can be reached would be that inequality is on the rise because there are some that benefit from that situation, and others that do not.

From the point of view of the relationship between inequality and policy, the persistent rise of inequality would mean that those that benefit from it, are also those that determine policy. Worth mentioning, at this point, is the fact that the state of inequality is one that adversely affects the vast majority, as is borne out by the figures given above, which implies that the policies that governments make, are not made for the benefit of the majority.

The rise in economic inequality means that the financially rich get richer with time, whilst the financially poor get poorer during that same time. So, what the wealthy are doing, with time, is accumulating wealth, which is done at the expense of the others within the society. In other words, there is a class warfare going on, which is being waged and won by the rich. This was the literal position that was stated by one of the rich in the USA, Warren Buffet, who in 2006 was quoted as saying “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”¹¹

Accumulation, I believe, results from a feeling of scarcity of the resource that is accumulated. It is for this reason that people and businesses, regardless of the economic fortunes that they have, seemingly seem not to ever be satisfied with what they have. This feeling of scarcity, automatically creates the situation that others who might be seen as vying for the same resource, are seen as competitors, in a competition for those perceived scarce resources.

In that competition, those who are able to gain control of who gets to use those resources, and when they get to use them become the ultimate winners, which at this point, as Warren Buffet points out, is the rich class. To be able to do so over a period of time, however, requires some control over the rest of the population. Making the assumption that the rest of the population are numerically superior would mean that mechanisms are used to make sure that the rest of the population do not come together. In other words, for a small minority within a society to have and maintain power, they would have to make sure that the majority of the population are put in a position, in which they do not question or interfere with the way that the power is distributed.

The easiest way that the maintaining of power by a small minority can happen would be if the majority are divided, and made to spend time and energy on those divisions, which then distracts them from coming together to question why the power is in the hands of the small minority. This is what I believe to be what is behind the divisions that exists in most societies, such as racism, which pits people that should be in the majority, when looked at through the lenses of wealth distribution, the key to having a good quality of life, against one another. A position that becomes entrenched if those divisions, such as racism become part of the institutions that are supposed to protect everyone, as energy is then spent trying to deal with it, the distraction away from dealing with the issue of why the majority do not have a good quality of life.

This idea of gaining some benefit, which then leads to producing a disadvantage for others is sometimes referred to as a zero-sum game. The zero-sum game, where a few people gain benefit, at the expense of others, is where we can, I believe, point a finger at, for the inequality that continues both within countries as well as when countries are compared with one another.

Something that comes with competition is that if the provision of services are left in the hands of those who are in competition, there tends to be the creation of a multi-tier systems, when it comes to the quality of the services provided. This is because the service providers, in that situation of competing with one another, tend to stray away from providing the service, for the sake of providing it, and are instead diverted to provide it for the reason of winning in that competition, which in most cases, is for the accumulation of wealth.

This is the unfortunate situation that we have in a lot of countries around the world, where the quality of services like those within the educational, healthcare and social care systems is dependent on how much money they have to pay for the service. This produces the obvious result that those with enough money get the best available services, and those that do not have enough money either do not get the service, or one with low quality.

The competition that the imagined scarcity brings with it, is one that not only pits people within a country against one another, the reason behind the inequality within a country, but it also pits countries against each other, something that creates inequality between countries.

Competition tends to lead to the formulation of alliances, with the participants all playing on one side or the other of the them versus us tension of the zero-sum game. The inequality between countries, or global inequality can be seen from the fact that children born in some countries are 60 times more likely to die before they are five years old, as compared with children born in other countries¹². Similarly, the provisions available to encourage children remain in school are in some countries such that they remain for up to 20 years, receiving formal education, whilst in other countries, this expectation is 5 years¹².

Absurd as this situation is, particularly when you consider that there is, in my opinion, enough for all of us human beings on earth, the desire for individual benefit, as against trying to achieve benefit for all, has stretched itself to where our survival, as a species, might possibly be under threat. This threat comes from the evidence that the temperatures on our globe has been gradually increasing. If such an increase continues, we might get to the position where some of the life, including ours, might not be sustained anymore.

Astoundingly, the fact that human activities might be detrimental to the balance of the earth, date back into history. One of such reports was published in 1967¹³, which linked our activities to the warming of the globe, with the implication that we might be in a position to control that, if we choose to alter our activities.

Regardless of the availability of this information, we have somehow not restricted ourselves from the activities that have been suggested as possibly contributing to the warming of the globe. The reason for this can only be explained through the suggestion that a few people gain some benefit, from the continuation of those activities, again playing the zero-sum game, and they believe that the profits that they make outweigh the possible dangers that might arise from their continued involvements with those activities.

One could easily be forgiven to think that there have got to be mechanisms that are there to protect not just human beings, but also hinder our activities such that they do not cause harm to others and the environment around us.

Indeed there are, but we are in the unfortunate situation that the thought of individual benefit combined with the thinking of scarcity, which leads to the them versus us mentality seen when individuals act within countries, is also evident when countries act as individual entities. This has meant that those who are in a position of advantage, and want to retain that advantage, work towards making sure that they, and they alone, are the ones that in that position of advantage.

It is for this reason that international institutions, which are supposed to represent all countries on an equal level, have allowed for the inequality between countries. The policies that come out from these international institutions, tend to be dictated to by the more powerful countries, who through the use of mechanisms such as economic contributions, control the policies that are created, and which because of the thinking of individual benefit are normally geared to benefit them, and the alliances that they have created.

In order to get what they want, some countries even go beyond the use of the international institutions, and meddle directly in the affairs of other countries employing methods such as the infiltration of the political institutions of those other countries¹⁴, and where required through the use of military might, which sometimes takes the form of extrajudicial murders of political figures.

The result is that the lives of people are not protected on an equal basis both within countries and also when countries are compared with one another. There therefore is no surprise that governments and international institutions, in the main, do not have the trust that they should have from the majority of their populations. A 2017 OECD report stated that only about 43% of people, on average, of those who lived in the countries that were surveyed trusted their governments¹⁵. In the USA, this figure has been at about 20% for the last 10 years¹⁶.

It is into this divided world that we have created, where there is growing inequality both within and between countries, and in which not everybody has access to all the services that they need to protect their rights, and in which people do not trust neither their governments nor the international institutions that are supposed to protect them that the covid-19 disease, caused by the coronal virus, has come to visit.

We can see, if we choose to

The presence of the virus has exposed a number of things, and in particular the relationships that exists between governments and its people.

The first of these, as should be expected, is the difference in the quality of healthcare that is available for everyone within a given society. This comes from the situation, as was mentioned above, that the facilities and services that have been designed to cater for human wellbeing has been linked to money. The fact that money is not distributed evenly, means that there would be a difference in the rate at which care is given, with the difference being based on the financial status of the individual.

Trust in government, which translates to trust that the policies of government would provide protection, would mean that people would follow instructions that are given by government. The way that people followed the instructions on what to do, with regards the struggle to limit the impact of the virus, which were given by government, differed from country to country.

A clear exposé that the spread of the virus has brought to light, in the relationships that countries have with one another, is the fact that manufacture is concentrated in some countries. This has meant that the medical supplies and equipment that are needed to deal with the situation, for those countries that do not manufacture them, have got to be sent from the countries that manufacture them, a clear case of dependence. I have often wondered what would happen to the major problem of unemployment, which is something that plagues most countries. I imagine if the problem of unemployment would be a problem at all, if all the things that were used in that country, were made in the country.

A worry that has been with us for a while, and particularly with the young, who are the ones that are fully engaged in the connectivity that the world has today, is the awareness of our uniqueness. Most of us now seem to follow the lead of others, without necessarily giving thought to the actions that we have copied from others, a challenge to our individuality as well as our ability to carry out critical assessment.

Understandably, one of the things that happened, after people learnt about the coming of the virus, was to go into shops to stock up on supplies. In the early days of this hoarding, one of the items that were difficult to find, in the shelves of the shops, here in Jyväskylä, Finland, where I live, was toilet paper. When I inquired as to the possible reason for this, I was informed that it was a trend that had begun on the internet. So, regardless of the fact that Finland produced toilet paper, people in copying what they had seen, and without giving that act proper consideration, had created scarcity of an item that was produced locally.

This situation of copying what others do, without necessarily giving it thought, remined me of the rise of xenophobia around the world almost immediately following the 2007 economic collapse. The view that I hold on this, being that people, in looking for an explanation of what had led to that economic collapse, were met with information that diverted their attention away from the probable reasons. They were instead met with a finger that pointed in the direction of the minorities within the societies. This diversion which was based on dividing people, then, like a fire surrounded by lots of dry wood, spread through most of the world, and in the process took the attention away from the possible inquiries into the probable reasons for the collapse.

Mention of the economy, brings to mind the exposure of another fallacy that the coming of the corona virus has brought to light. For quite a long while there has been the spread of a thought, which some had even taken to almost religious levels, and which it appeared had spread like a cloak that covered the whole world. This thought was captured in the mantra, that markets were the answer to every human problem. The corona virus has clearly exposed this fallacy for what it is. This is because the markets did not even attempt to make a stand, and have had their actors run for cover, many with bowls, asking to be filled from the very coffers that a lot of them had tried to deprive – taxes.

The message, I believe, should now be clear that if we want to have hope for the future, that hope can probably only be found in public policies that encourage us to pay the taxes that would ultimately provide us with protection, when we need it.

The policy that was adopted by most countries was that people should stay at home. This was a policy that also exposed the fragile nature of some of the systems that people live under, as its effects differed from place to place, dependent on how humane the infrastructure, that was available, was.

People being required to stay at home meant that there would be an effect on the work that they did, as most people worked away from their homes. What was adopted, in most places, where the physical presence of a worker was not required, was a transfer of the work home. This being made possible where there were affordable fast internet connections. In places where this was possible, worked continued as usual, with the use of available technology such as video conferencing employed to facilitate meetings, where those were necessary. As can be imagined, here again, there were differences, as affordable internet connection was not possible everywhere.

Fast affordable internet connections has meant, in some places, that the effect of staying at home, has not affected the provision of certain services, such as education, as the classroom, in those places, moved away from a physical one to a virtual one, as is the case in Finland, where I live.

For some workers, the option available, with the lack of movement has been that they have had to be laid off from work. Again, with this situation, there are marked differences, from region to region. This being dependent on the systems that have been adopted. Some of these have been based on humaneness, and as a result have provisions for workers who are laid off, such that the quality of their lives are not affected. This made possible by creating funds for workers, which are contributed into, by the workers, so that when they are unemployed, the fund pays them a reasonable amount, as is the case of most workers in my country of residence, Finland. This is in stark contrast with countries like that of my birth, Nigeria, where there are no such provisions for most of the workers, and some of them get their daily bread from the work that they do on the day, which means that when there is no work, they do not have anything to fall back on, to survive from day to day.

The hope that understanding brings

Though the coming of the virus has brough with it a bit fear and the uncertainty, I believe it has also come with a lot of hope. Hope that we can create a future, in which the values that we have are such that they ensure that we all, as one humanity, are able to survive together, in this world that we have found ourselves in.

An example of such hope is that with people have been forced, so to speak, to stay at home. This has led to the taking away of the hurry, which most people in most places, had put on themselves, with little attention paid to the consequences that being in that state continuously, which had become the norm, has on us and on our health, in particular.

The requirement to stay at home has also meant that people with families are now compelled to spend some more time with the family, allowing for a host of possibilities. These include passing over to children the true values that parents have, through example that can only be passed on by being together, an essential part of the educating of children, which being in that hurry has made most of us forget.

With the majority of people at home, the number of cars that are driven have been dramatically reduced, with the effect that the pollution that the driving of cars produce has also been reduced. One of these is that gas nitrogen dioxide, which is believed to be responsible for respiratory diseases, amongst human beings. A comparison of the measure of nitrogen dioxide, shows a very considerable reduction of the gas from the time before people were required to stay at home, and the time after ^{[17, 18]}. The implication being that our air is now cleaner, and as a result easier for our lungs to deal with. I can imagine that this reduction also has an impact on other animals and plants around the world.

On the subject of the reduction of gases produced by human activities, there has been the reduction in the production of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases, emitted by another mode of transportation, this time, the aeroplane. This is because there has been the reduction in the number of flights that used to take place around the world. A good example of this could already be seen in February of this year, 2020, with the reduction of up to 60% of flights between China and Japan¹⁹. This was then followed by airlines like Emirates²⁰ and Turkish Airlines ²¹, who cancelled some of their flights for a given period.

Reductions in the production of gases such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide, have been demands that people concerned with our environment, have been trying to make for quite a while. Calls, which had largely gone unheeded, as was mentioned earlier, are now for the relief of our lungs and the whole of our ecosystem, being imposed by the virus.

A couple of casualties that our bid to take care of just ourselves, brought about by the sense of scarcity, which has driven competition into our being, were solidarity and his mother compassion. The possible invasion of the hospital wards by patients of the corona virus disease is now thankfully, it is beginning to appear, release them. One has to mention, though, that this release has also been accompanied, in some places, with the release of their opposites in the form of xenophobia and racism. The hope has got to be that we are able to overcome the differences that we perceive, which leads us to see others as being different from us, and in doing so, finding our way to compassion, which gives birth to solidarity.

Solidarity with the suffering of others, has been a constant policy of at least one country, Cuba, who have been sending doctors and medical expertise to places that had needed them, most of the time without any note of acknowledgment from the media. This does not mean that others have not volunteered themselves when there has been strife. On the contrary, doctors and other medical workers have indeed shown solidarity, a lot of times, with the risk of death, by going around places in the world, where there have been medical emergencies. The mentioning of Cuba being that, such endearing humanitarian acts have been consistently government policy.

This policy seems also now to be copied by China, who have, in addition to Cuba, also sent medical personnel and equipment to countries around the world, to assist with the battles that those countries have against the disease caused by the virus. The hope would be that countries can make it policy, to send their people, who are equipped to deal with humanitarian emergencies, to those places around the world, with those humanitarian emergencies, to collectively bring an end to them.

Which way, after the storm?

From time to time disasters, both those we create, and those that nature chooses to express, visit us. Prudence demands that those of us who survive, alter the systems that are in place, so as to, if possible, ensure that those disasters either do not visit us again or if they do, cause the least possible damage to both us and our environment.

The possibility to look at the systems that govern us, with the aim of overhauling them, considering that they have not done their jobs of protecting everybody, is the biggest one that I believe the invasion of the corona virus presents us. To do this, we would have to look at the systems that we have currently in place, and ask if they fulfil their intended purposes, and in the case where they do not, try to find out the reasons why, followed by correcting them.

The situation with the governments of some countries, and how they allowed for inequality not only to exist but grow with time was covered earlier on. The implication of this, in systems where access to essential services are gotten through an exchange for money, being that since there is an inequality in the distribution of money, was also covered, as there would be parts of the population do not have access to those services. As was shown, part of this failure lies with the control that those who benefit from the inequality are able to have, both on the formulation of policies as well as the creation of divisions.

The same idea, of a few formulating policies to benefit them, at the expense of the majority, and doing so through the creation of divisions, can also be seen in the way that international organizations, treaties and agreements are created and implemented.

The base of the current form of international organizations, treaties and agreements, were created during the second world war, which ended in the year 1945. These include organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The thrust of aims behind these organizations, could be seen in the UN’s charter, whose text include the phrases saving “…succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, and to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”²².

The reality today, though, is something that is quite different from those aims. This has been exposed through the lack of access to services, such as healthcare, which go to protect the rights of people. It is no different if you look at wars and conflicts, as in the year 2018, there were 78 conflicts that did not involve states, and 52 that involved them²³.

It therefore would be easy to reach the conclusion that, just like a majority of governments have failed in their duty to protect the rights of those that live within their boundaries, the international instruments that are designed to do the same on the international level, have also failed to meet up with their intended aims.

This raises the question of the possible reasons why this has happened. I believe that a proper investigation of why this has happened, would reveal that the organizations, treaties and agreements, were written, not with the ultimate aim of bringing about cooperation and solidarity between peoples, which would require equality, but instead written within the divisive framework found in the them versus us, which competition not only brings but fosters.

It is inside of this framework that those with power at the time, who were ultimately the authors of the international treaties and agreements, had written them, with the aim, not of fostering equality, which is the prerequisite to peace, but of continuing to hold the advantage that they had complete with the levers of power. Putting it another way, the current international organizations, treaties and agreements were put in place from the mind frame of a zero-sum game, in which there were always going to be winners and losers.

If we take the UN’s charter, as an example, it was written such that the job of the maintenance of international peace and security was given to the UN’s Security Council ²². This Security Council, though has five permanent members, each of whom was given a veto vote. Meaning that even if all the other countries in the world were of an opinion that was different to any of those of a particular permanent member, it could render the majority’s opinion null by applying its veto. A concentration of power that clearly states that nations were not place on an equal pedestal.

The lack of equality can also be seen in institutions like the World Bank, which since it started in 1946 has only had Presidents from one country, the USA, apart from a blip in 2019, when they had an acting President, Kristalina Georgieva, from Bulgaria, who has since been replaced by yet another President from the USA²⁴.

In addition to the bias in favour of those with power, in the setting up of the international organizations, there was also some inadequacies that were built into how these organizations would run, which has allowed them, sometimes to be deviated away from the intended goals. One of these is where the organizations get their funding from, something that, in the case of some of the UN’s organizations, was not made compulsory or at least not implemented in that manner. This has led to the situation where some countries do not pay the dues that they are supposed to, thereby leaving a gap in their operations.

An example of this could be seen in the recent position taken by the President of the USA, who in a speech given on the 14^th of April 2020, in the middle of the spread of the corona virus around the world, took the unilateral decision to stop the funding that the USA gives to the UN’s World Health Organization, the organization that should bear the primary responsibility of handling the crises. Worthy of note here is that the USA’s contributions come up to about 15% of the organization’s budget ²⁵.

This lack of funding for the international organizations, from governments, has meant that they have had to look for funding elsewhere, in the private sector, with the danger that the organizations become beholden to the wishes of those who fund them, which might in some cases go contrary to their aims, at least that of impartiality, a base that has to be found in all of such international organizations.

I am strongly drawn to the thinking that we all, as human beings, would like to live in a world where we all live in peace with one another, as well as in harmony with our natural environment. I am also strongly of the opinion that this is something that can be achieved.

For this to happen, I believe that the first thing to do would be for all of us human beings to have the willingness to create together, as equals, goals that are common for all of humanity, as well as together creating methods to achieve those goals. A key prerequisite to this would, in my opinion, having trust in each other, something that is unfortunately not present today. This trust would allow for an openness that seems to be missing in the decisions that are made, as well as allow for the full participation of all of humanity, in the affairs that affect them.

In the case of governments, this could take the form of organizing its institutions in such a way that it is the will of the people that determines the day to day issues that affect their lives, and not the dictates of others, who in some cases might not even be affected by those decisions, something that is not currently the case almost anywhere. Similarly, for international organizations, this would mean allowing all its members to participate on an equal bases with each other, again something that is currently not the case.

Equally important, in my opinion, is the fact that the current thinking that rules all of us, which is based on a scarcity of resources, that then gives birth to the need to compete with one another, has got to be replaced with the thinking that there is enough for all of us, if we choose to share what we have, in a manner that is fair to everybody. In other words, we would have to alter our thinking to bring us to the point where we see others not as competitors, but as partners, together with whom we would have to cooperate instead of compete.

Altering the way that we think away from competition into cooperation is the way that, I believe, we could change the game that we currently play. Changing it from a zero-sum game, which is the game that has been played for millennia, and which always produces winners and losers, to a non-zero-sum game, in which everyone is a winner.

If we are able to do this, we would arrive at the point where there would be no need for example of building armaments, including biological, chemical, nuclear, conventional, and robotic ones, that are intended to be used on others. We would be at the place where we can create task forces that would respond to any emergency, in any part of the world, with the aim of resolving the emergency, and not what benefit doing so would bring to its participants.

In the creation of such a structure, one cannot forget the aim, which is to ensure that everyone has a good quality of life. To make this possible, all of the services that are aimed to protect the rights of people, have got to be made accessible to them, with the recommendation that they are made free. This would include services such as educational, healthcare, social care, and the judiciary. In addition to ensuring access to them, by making them free, they all have to be governed with rule of impartiality, in which they serve everyone on an equal basis, not what we currently have, which only properly serves a small section of societies within countries, and similarly a small minority, when all of humanity is considered.

Of course, access to the basic necessities, such as clean water, adequate food, and adequate housing, have got to be provided for everybody. If we are to continue with the system where people work, to provide for their needs, then there has to be work for everyone, who is capable of working, with a wage structure that ensures that everyone can afford the basic necessities. One possible way that this could be achieved within individual countries, would be for them to take on the manufacture of the goods that are used inside of their countries, something that would make them more independent, when it comes to what the people there consume.

The independence that comes with producing what is consumed locally, is of course limited to the resources that are available in that region. The non-availability of all the possible raw materials for producing goods, would mean that there would be the need for trade. This would enable raw materials that are needed for local production, but which are not locally available to be had. This should not be such a difficult task, if the spirit with which we relate with one another is based on cooperation.

The talk of landscapes introduces our natural environment. We have sometimes forgotten that all that we have, that sustains us, is provided for us by the earth. For the earth to continue to provide for our needs and wants, there is a balance, the conditions of which allow us to be able to get our sustenance. This is a balance that through our actions we have chosen to ignore, and have through that put in danger. This is not a position that is tenable, if we want the earth to continue to support our existence. We must have an understanding of that balance and ensure that nothing that we do would put it into jeopardy. One possible way that we could do this would be to carry out a thorough assessment of how our activities affect our environment and remove those that could affect that balance.

These, I believe, are the opportunities that I see humanity being presented with, with this invasion of the corona virus. I also believe that these aims are relatively easy to achieve, if we are able to begin to think of others, like we think of ourselves, and realize that others too, like us, want to live in a world where they have a good quality of life. I am of the opinion that no matter what the resources we have, if we are able to share them equitably, we put ourselves in a stronger position to survive. For this to be possible, though, requires that we have the willingness to build such a world. The question is, if a simple virus can make us alter the way we behave, is not yet time that we mutated our world into one that works for each and every one of us, and thereby ensuring that we all live in the security that can deal with the possible upheavals that we might face in the future?

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