Throwing Rocks at the Moon

“It isn’t over. I’m absolutely terrified. It’s all the things that we don’t understand. I feel like the proto-human coming out of the forest primeval and seeing the moon for the first time and throwing rocks at it.”

Poltergeist

We think we’re so smart. We think we have all the answers. The latest science. The latest tech. We got this.

Until we don’t.

And then the doubts start creeping in. Do we have this? Are we smart enough? Do we have all the answers?

The short answer to those questions is this.

We don’t.

As a stage 4 cancer survivor, I can tell you from first hand experience that science doesn’t have all the answers. We’ve come a long way since doctors put leeches on their patients to get rid of their bad blood. We don’t look at plagues and outbreaks of sickness as God’s punishment for our sins. We no longer blame poor innocent single women for crop failures. And then drown them.

But before we look back at those times and laugh at those simple folks as ridiculously dumb and ignorant, think about where we are today. I’m sitting in my house, listening to music, writing a blog. I can’t go to work because the governor of my state has issued a shelter in place order for a pandemic. My work, the manufacture of office furniture, is rightly not considered essential.

So here I am, sitting in my living room like much of the rest of the population, safely home, sheltering in place, keeping a social distance from the rest of humanity. And once again, we look to science to save us. A vaccine, a cure, something that will help us get over this latest calamity to the human race.

People are getting desperate. Supposed cures for this latest disease are popping up on the internet. People that consume fish tank cleaner to fight off the Coronavirus don’t look much smarter than a medieval doctor opening up a vein on some poor slob trying to fight off the Black Plague.

There are a lot of very smart people working on this thing. More than likely, a vaccine or a drug regimen will eventually be produced to cure this. Science is never settled. Science is always moving forward, learning, adapting, constantly evolving. I honestly believe we will eventually solve this.

But, here’s the thing. One of the things that we have learned over the past couple of hundred years is that viruses and diseases love filth. Clara Barton walked into a medical tent during the Civil War, and was appalled at the conditions. More men were dying from infection and disease than from wounds sustained on the battlefield. She started the American Red Cross as primarily a clean up crew. Sanitary conditions made a big difference on who lived and who died.

I know we’ve been told to wash our hands. To put on a mask. To stay away from other humans. Cleanliness is important to getting over this.

But, nowadays, the world is a smaller place. We have the ability to fly all over the globe, and go to places that frankly, aren’t very clean. Some of these places butcher animals on the same surfaces that other animals are butchered on. There is no cleaning. Nothing is sanitary. People get sick, and then more people get sick. And the sickness spreads beyond the city where it starts, eventually circling the globe.

We need the World Health Organization to forget about political correctness, and call out the cause of this disease. The wet markets in China are disgusting, cruel, and ultimately a disease festival that keeps happening over and over. SARS. H1N1. Swine flu. The communist government of China needs to shut the markets down. And if they don’t, the rest of the world needs to cut China off from the rest of the world.

This isn’t about racism. This is about human survival. We’re smarter than this. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but this one seems kind of obvious. This is preventable.

If we don’t prevent the obvious, we’re just throwing rocks at the moon.

Thanks for reading.

Peace.

Stay healthy.

I provided a link to a Vox report on wet markets in China.