Covid19, a disruptor of balance of nature or restorer of balance of nature?

Covid19, disruptor or restorer of balance of nature?

Few days back, I saw visuals of ducks crossing streets and penguins near the sea bays and those of dolphins surfacing quite close to sea bays as it had never occurred befores In a cartoon, prior to lockdown, wild animals were shown to be in cages while people watched in open. Post-covid19 showed wild animals roaming outside while people are caged inside.. And the main reason was complete freedom for these animals to move around and away from their usual confined habitat, in view of lockdown that occurred in cities, towns and villages due to Covid19 disease.

Further, reports of improvement in air quality index in terms of lower estimates of suspended particles as well as carbon-di-oxide, methane and nitrous oxide (greenhouse gas) emissions are the welcome fall out of lockdown due to Covid19 diseases.

Given these circumstances, this suggests welcome change towards restoring balance of nature back to a healthier environment. And credit goes to Covid19 that has caused pandemic in human beings. In fact, Covid19 is affecting human beings only, that represent the higher trophic level in the ecosystem, who do not have next one above to feed upon. Covid19 is not the next trophic level too as no other life forms live on it.

This opens up a new dimension that human being who is a part of nature, has a highly disruptive role to play and set its own parameters to decide the levels at which other life forms should live, live in numbers and quality as he decides.

The humans have shown their ability to survive and multiply in the infinite number. It took about 1800 years for humans to grow to close to 1 billion in 1800, 128 years to reach 2 billion in 1928, 32 years to 3 billion 1960, 15 years to 4 billion in 1975, 12 years to 5 billion in 1987, 12 years to 6 billion in 1999, again 12 years to reach 7 billion in 2011, and 8 years to reach today’s population of 7.7 billion in 2019. It is reported that we might be 10 billion by 2050. The exponential growth of human population has stopped from 1962 onwards, when growth rates started falling off. And this has occurred due to reduced birth rates as compared to death rates, as more and more people are living for a longer period. And this is a nature’s way to contain. But, the sheer number is quite a big to worry about.

Thus, earth carries the largest burden of human population as ever in its history. And to fulfil their basic growing needs, humans are dictating balance of nature as they favour; with increasing land being used to grow food and other needs and higher intensity of land use, depleting forests, marine resources as well as natural resources that are not infinite on the earth. Over the years, as we adjust to these changes, our comfort levels have tended to define this distorted picture of nature as its being in balanced form.

Covid19, a form of corona viruses that have existed over many years has come as a new form of threat to human existence, similar to Ebola, SARS, MERS, and other flu viruses that we have known in the last few decades in the immediate past. Covid19 appears to spread fast, cause mortality and morbidity by affecting respiration and has a mortality rate of 2-10% of infected persons at the current level of curative measures.

Are these viruses specific to human beings a new form to correct human population growth, unlike the Thomas Robert Malthus’s (see photo below) 1798 prediction that population growth will be controlled by limited supply of foodgrains for living? Malthus’s prediction was defeated by the rapid technological advances to increase food supply commensurate with human population.

As we know, population densities of each form of life are self-regulated in the given ecosystem. Is that going to be such a form of regulation of population densities that nature naturally acts, but for humans it is ethically horrible, as we are unique bestowed with intelligence that no life form has, ability to socialize that no animal society has, and the ability to think that no animal form did before. Ethically such a control of population is horrible, but as not all humans see it this way. For instance, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro mentions that some people will die, urging Brazilians to go back to work. Further, he said as casually as possible that we all will die one day. This is said easily as  a matter of fact. Similar is eagerness of the US President, Donald Trump to open back the economy by the Easter (that falls on April 12, 2020). There are others who believe that loss of economy due to lockdown will prove costlier than loss of some lives. These remarks are insensitive and unacceptable to most of humanity. but do these underline the evolutionary instinct in animal behaviour subtly towards correcting imbalance? 

Hope as humans to be humane, we beat Covid19 with our best efforts-both preventive as well as curative.

Photo credit (wikipedia.org)

Covid19, a disruptor or restorer of balane of nature?