Omicron and the Fear of Human Future
Humans have rushed to square themselves for own safety. However, one important question remains: How much longer will we keep the pandemic going?
Toward the end of the second year of its haunting spread, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has added one more variant, with the World Health Organization (WHO) most recently announcing the Omicron variant.
Not much scientific evidence can be gathered to help provide a conclusion as to how vicious Omicron is compared with the previous variants: Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
Humans have rushed to square themselves for own safety. However, one important question remains: How much longer will we keep the pandemic going?
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The pandemic continues simply not because of the virus transmissibility, but because of humans’ tendency to “keep it going”. Such an assumption may be wrong, but the dynamics in approaching the virus spread over the last two years point to that direction.
We're not talking about conspiracy theories. We are talking about humans who are embroiled in fear to the extent they are unwittingly prolonging the pandemic.
We can accept these scientific studies even though it is too early to draw such conclusions.
Recent laboratory experiments indicate that two injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may not provide sufficient protection against Omicron. Laboratory studies in South Africa and Germany also show the same indication. We can accept these scientific studies even though it is too early to draw such conclusions.
We also have yet to fully understand where this Omicron came from. It is evident that the variant did not come from the previous variants. It was not from Alpha nor Delta. Its genomic structure, scientists say, is very unique. It has its own lineage which may evolve in parallel. In fact, it is possible that the Omicron we know today came from a variant that has evolved itself since mid-2020.komoa
It was not from South Africa, and no one knows where exactly it was from. It mutates in a dark place and is unidentifiable by human scientific eyes.
Ignorance
The frustration of scientists confirms three things: humans fall into a quandary of ignorance, ignorance breeds fear, and fear arouses greed.
We have been shocked by this new virus spread given the fact that scientists, even the WHO, compiled post-outbreak learning points of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002.
We were quick to fight a virus with extraordinary ferocity like SARS, but we have lost focus in fighting SARS-CoV-2, which causes a milder flu.
The problem is probably not that we don't know anything. We understand what Dobzhansky, an evolutionary biologist, wrote in his 1973 essay that nothing in biology makes sense without being on the path of evolution. This pandemic put a thick note on his statement.
We also learn and know many new things from this evolution. However, we pile up new problems by imprisoning that knowledge in its respective compartments.
Our knowledge is fragmented from one to another. An understanding of cellular viruses and the human immune system is insufficient to contain their spread without comprehensive social strategies. Viruses, in fact, do not evolve for themselves, but affect changes in human social behavior.
What appears to be our ignorance is how humans respond in the course of their social evolution. How new social norms are formed and compassion on a large scale either builds up or even fades away.
It is common for humans to mobilize humanitarian aid for victims of natural events, such as mountain eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis or floods. That is because, as Rousseau said centuries ago, humans are innately good.
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However, this pandemic has exposed another human trait, either individually or collectively in the form of national and global policies. We become intolerant of each other because of our skepticism of science.
Some agree on lockdowns, others are against them. Some want PCR tests to be carried out massively, some say they are useless and akin to extortion.
We have yet to train and evolve ourselves into thinking about prolonged pandemics.
It is probably due to the fact that we respond to threats with short-term strategies. We have yet to train and evolve ourselves into thinking about prolonged pandemics.
When this pandemic is predicted to last long, we are still skeptical, “Tomorrow the pandemic will be over. After Idul Fitri, the pandemic is over. After winter, we return to normalcy.”
We don't realize that this pandemic still holds global statistical data that is abstract and difficult to predict, not because the virus poses invicibility, but humans let themselves succumb to fear.
Fear over future
We fear what will happen next after Omicron. We choose to act for own safety, and disregard empathy and care for others.
We seem to be fighting cautiously for our own future life that we ourselves can hardly see it. From that fear, we cultivate greed.
Rich countries have been embarking on third-dose vaccination drives, which appears to cause a widening gap amid limited vaccine production.
More than half the population of the United States and Canada are fully vaccinated, and nearly 20 percent have received a booster. Similar figures are found for Europe, leaving African countries far behind with only 10 percent of the population fully vaccinated on average.
Disparity is factual, and this will only prolong the endless cycle of the pandemic. However, politicians, and some scientists, choose to ignore it. The Economist boldly states that Omicron “is not a punishment for vaccine inequity” with vague pretexts. We are dragged into an individualist, nation-wise thinking framework.
We research simply to justify our own beliefs about the pandemic and reduce our individualistic anxiety.
Fear and greed only push us to the path of knowledge about what we want, not what we need. We research simply to justify our own beliefs about the pandemic and reduce our individualistic anxiety.
We come up with year-end reflective questions. Are we injecting vaccines in our arms as an altruistic effort to solve the pandemic globally, or just as own way back to normal activities at the office, mall or on vacation?
Are children being pushed back to school because we are aware of the gaps between social groups caused by distance learning, or simply because we are tired of teaching children at home — and so we encourage our children to be vaccinated as soon as possible?
Are we arguing on social media about how we should respond to the pandemic to seek truth, or just to inflate personal egos and beliefs?
We are just moving from one uncertainty to another false certainty. We form a social group with common adherence to the scales and levels of truth.
We choose to make our ears noisy by our own voices without giving room for empathy to other voices. We also attach ouselves to "global solidarity", which appears to be a pseudo slogan. We speak sweetness on the podium, but act bitterness on the streets.
SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses that we have been struggling to deal with, in fact, only carry out their “spiritual” roles: transmit, replicate, then transmit again.
Like us, viruses need vitality, and that's how they try to survive, maybe, beyond the expiry use of the Greek letters: Theta, Rho, Sigma, Psi.
We deal with it in such a fragmentation of understanding, fear and greed that we ultimately discover the fact that our enemy is ourselves.
Ahmad Fuady, Lecturer at Medicine School, University of Indonesia
(This article was translated by Musthofid).