i choose to appreciate, not conspire

I am damn lucky

This week I got vaccinated.

I’m one lucky son of the… Earth.

Here I am, sitting comfortably and typing, while my hyper-intelligent body decodes an injected biological message. It tells my cells to make a certain type of proteins that will eventually lead to my immunity to COVID. After my cells receive the instructions, the message will be self-destructed, like messages from the Inspector Gadget cartoon. And all this is happening without me making the slightest conscious effort. Crazy!

If this was not enough, I’m benefiting (for free) from the latest, cutting-edge scientific progress in vaccine technologies. Not to mention that, thanks to the unprecedented scientific effort, we have vaccines developed, approved, manufactured, and distributed within an absolutely unthinkable timeline. Luck also helped with Covid jab, after all, we still don’t have a vaccine for viruses like HIV.

I’m lucky because COVID’s mortality is below 1%. SARS, for instance, was an order of magnitude worse: 10%. Still, it’s a kitten compared to MERS which killed over a third of its victims. And thanks goodness that the Bird Flu H5N1, with its 50% mortality rate, is not very contagious/airborne. At least not the one found in nature, because it was actually made contagious in the lab with so called function-gain research. As a side note here, viruses have been leaking from labs so many times. So we, humans, have our way of flirting with self-destruction, since releasing this one could mean saying goodbye to our civilization.

I’m lucky that I live in the 21st century. Do check this captivating visualisation of the history of pandemics, along with their death toll.

I’m lucky, but I’m also bitterly aware of just how privileged I am: By early June 2021, low-income countries had received only 0.2 % of the world’s COVID-19 vaccine supply.

But I have hope. Even though innovation first reaches the richest, gradually it spreads over to everyone. Just about when I was born, Smallpox was eradicated after a heroic 10-year global effort. Before, 2 million people were still dying per year. Up to 500 million people died from it in the 20th century. I mean, fuck, half a billion human beings, the majority of them being children. 

Still in the 1990s, an estimated 75,000 children in Africa were paralysed by polio each year. Just recently, Nigeria—the last country on the continent to have reported a case of wild polio—was declared clear of the disease, making Africa as a whole polio-free. This is thanks to a global effort to eradicate it that began in 1988 (led by WHO, UNICEF and the Rotary Foundation). And we are getting really close to eradicating it completely, everywhere. Fuck, yeah!!!

Thank you science

Thank you, science because with scientific progress we diminish the circle of avoidable suffering.

Thank you, science because I don’t have to be worried so much for my children to live past 5 years. Still in the 19th century, half of the babies died in their childhood. And we continue to make amazing progress today. The number of global deaths of children under 5 years dropped to its lowest point on record in 2019 – down to 5.2 million. Still in 1990, it was 12.5 million.

Thank you, science because you take us out of ignorance. I no longer fear that demons can visit me at night (or that I was abducted by aliens – though up to 4 million Americans believe they were) because I know about sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/ hypnopompic hallucinations. 

Thank you science, because I can now live a better life and enjoy more time with my family and friends. Where I live, there is widespread access to healthcare, electricity, sewage system, clean water etc. Let’s not take these things for granted because we only got them in the 20th century, and billions of humans still have no access to these goods.

Nonetheless, thank you science because still in the 19th century the vast majority of people (85%) lived in an extreme poverty. The miraculous progress has been happening in the 20th and 21st centuries. Still in 1990, 36% or nearly 2 billion people lived in extreme poverty. In 2018, it went down to 8.7% (650 million people).

Thank you, science because famine went from being a universal phenomenon to being an exception affecting only a small fraction of the world. In the mid-19th century in Western Europe, average food consumption was below today’s African levels. Still, in 1945, 50% of the world’s population was chronically malnourished. In 2015, it dropped to about 10%. Largely, this can be credited to the 1910s invention of the Haber-Bosch process that made highly effective nitrogen fertilizers cheap to produce for the first time. Before there were no synthetic fertilizers and crop yields were much lower. As a result, there was just not enough food.

Is it all that good?

There continue to be worrying trends too.

Pharma companies are not interested in certain, non-profitable areas of research, such as malaria. As a result, it still infects up to 600 million people a year and kills 400,000, mostly children.

The number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution and human rights violations in 2020 rose to nearly 82.4 million people. This is a further 4% increase on top of the already record-high 79.5 million at the end of 2019.

Globally, 53.4 million people used opioids in 2017 — 56% higher than previously estimated.

Global measles deaths climbed nearly 50% since 2016, claiming an estimated 207 500 lives in 2019 alone.

We have rapidly growing incidence of mental health problems, and perhaps our technology indeed exceeded our humanity.

Then, there is climate change (which is far more of an issue for humans than for the planet that will be just fine in the longer term).

So is there a case for optimism or not?

You may say that I’m optimistic and naïve because -here fill in the blanks, and there can be many.

Even putting aside all misinformation and conspiracy inclinations, there is still a lot of suffering and injustice in the world. But, to borrow from Hans Rosling book “Factfulness”, two thoughts are possible at the same time – it is bad, and it is improving. We are well aware of inequalities and injustice. Are we equally aware of the tremendous progress that we have been making?

I choose to educate myself responsibly and from trusted sources so that:

- When I worry, I worry about the right stuff

- I am mindful and grateful for all the good things.

And today, I am ever-grateful for getting the jab. Because, as someone said, when the gratitude starts, the struggle ends.

This post flows with: Gratitude - Ram Dass Becoming Nobody_Music From The Film