The World we live in – Rachel Borg

In January 2010, I was in Antarctica. It was the time that the H1N1 virus, known as Swine Flu, was making its way around the world. We were on a small ship, not the kind of mega cruise liners we see in the Grand Harbour. There were sanitizers all around and you had to make sure to use them especially when entering the restaurant. Frankly, it was Drake’s Passage which made me sick, not the flu.

As we came off the ship to go on the ice, we wore disposable covers on our shoes and stepped into basins of anti-septic. That is a procedure which is always mandatory in Antarctica to prevent viruses and bacteria from reaching the continent.

The greatest worry which the ice-cap is now facing is climate change, which is melting the ice at a much faster rate than we can realistically keep up with unless drastic measures are taken by all countries around the world. Another grave situation is the rapidly decreasing Amazon forest. Without the oxygen that it produces, our eco-system will fail.

We rely on clean air. We will lose actual towns and villages and possibly islands if the sealevel keeps on rising from the melting ice, which in turn has an effect on the winds and where they blow and at what latitude. This causes extremes in temperature, unusual rainfall, fires, hurricanes where they are not normally expected to land and much flooding, as we have seen this winter in Britain, where they are still facing flood alerts.

In the midst of the climate crises, we now have COVID-19, which is causing alarm, fear and disruption on a scale that is almost too widespread for us to handle. But in other places, concerns are more direct, more tangible.

So many communities, families and local areas have been displaced by floods and devastating fire. In Syria, war-fatigued women and children must flee war and then face bitter cold on an open field. Children die.

For others, it is famine and drought from which they flee. They must find a way to support the family if they cannot grow crops and see their children die of hunger or lack of medicine.

In order to try and curb the spread of COVID-19, countries like Italy, where there is a high spread of the virus, have asked their citizens to stay indoors and avoid social contact, while also banning travel outside their quarters and beyond.

People, naturally, feel concerned about the spread of the Coronavirus. It can have an impact on our life. It can kill and has killed. The very idea of how it possibly originated — from bat soup in Wuhan wet market — is enough to make us imagine all sorts of horrid germs invading us and playing around with our organs, transforming our very breath into infection and disease. This is not something we can prepare for or vaccinate against. If it invades you, you are basically alone and sick. The foreign element of it leads us to think that we can keep it out of our borders. That is just in our mind, as we are experiencing. We can only take steps to limit it and deprive it of hosts.

In China, they are able to build a hospital in a week and also provide health workers to take care of the sick. That is something that the West cannot do. So, for now, the instruction is to wash our hands and avoid contaminating others if you have been abroad and observe mandatory quarantine if you have been travelling to a banned country.

Tourism is the first to suffer. Planes are grounded, hotels are facing cancellations and the economy as we know it, with and without construction, is likely to feel the effect of less consumption. People had planned weddings with guests coming from abroad. In Italy, even funerals are on hold. Not sure how that works, but the sound of it is enough to create a sense of doom and unfamiliar territory. Burials go back to the first civilization. We imagine that our life as we know it, is under threat.

There is the core of the problem. The unfamiliar force that this virus has. People have seen their homes washed away by floods. Australia has lived through a nightmare of hell fire in 2019. These events, though, are largely confined to a space, somewhere else. This virus cannot be seen and can reach into any part of the world, given a carrier. Tourism has become a way of life not just for Europeans. People are travelling not only to their neighbouring country but far and wide; to Asia, America and Africa and the Middle East.

Until a few months ago, Greta Thunberg was trying to travel to the US carbon-free and we are all advised to urgently reduce our carbon-footprint and if possible, vacation at home and avoid catching a plane.

Well, that has become a reality, like it or not. If climate change could not curb our travel needs, the virus did. It slammed shut the gates and confined us to the space we know, our home. At least, we have a home and internet and I guess everyone has enough toilet paper. Some have help and someone to take care of them when they are sick. Others are alone and will have to wonder whether their health will get worse and they might need hospitalization or whether they are well enough to stay home.

We do not know how bad it will get. In an article from the New York Post by Michael Fumento, dated 9 March 2020, he explained how China still accounts for 80% of the cases and deaths. But its cases peaked and began declining. Subsequent countries will follow the same pattern in what’s called Farr’s Law. The law states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola - they all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu. He also said that flu is vastly more contagious than the new Coronavirus, as the World Health Organisation has noted.

One thing we do know is that once the media sniffs a story that will keep on giving, they go all in. This creates awareness but also some mis-information and unnecessary panic. Can the media go back to normal after the virus falls? Could they instead have become hooked into the realization that panic is good for viewing? They have a ready-made story, happening now with the climate emergency. Perhaps they can begin to cover that with the same air-time and experts who can dissect it and educate us. Not for panic, but for concrete action to happen.

We all pray that Malta will avoid large scale contagion and that by L-Imnarja we can go back to Festi and a delayed wedding season. Travel will be back on and the empty bottles of sanitizer will fill the landfill at Magħtab. We hope for a good Summer in tourism to make up for the past months and hopefully, we will continue to wash our hands and sneeze into a tissue and not into people’s faces. Let us also cherish our elderly for it is without them that we are poorer.

The best lesson we can take away from this experience is that we are all connected. There is no distinction between one person and another and we need to care for one another and behave with responsibility towards all.