COVID-19: Bad Karma, or an Existential Opportunity

This coronavirus is quite a phenomenon. How we are handling it is becoming a phenomenon, in itself. The Trump administration is thoroughly committed to blaming China for the pandemic, calling it the “Wuhan Virus”, among other selectively ethnic labels. Other nations seem less interested in affixing blame, and more intent on managing this global scourge. In so focusing their energies, they all appear to be doing a better job than America is doing. 

This government and the American people are, for the most part, handing COVID badly. When you blame others, this is what happens:  You take no responsibility for the problem, and you accept no responsibility for fixing it. You end up waiting for change – perhaps waiting for a “vanishing” (of the virus), as Trump supposes. Change will come; it always comes. But, when you sit back and wait for a change, it comes as a toss-up: for better or for worse. (Some crow, “We’ve fast-tracked the search for a vaccine.” Yes, and what Trump and many Americans like most about this “warp-speed” search is the prospect that it might save them from having to make any sacrifices. Just throw some billions at it, and go about your freedoms. They still don’t get it. COVID laughs at America’s money, and then takes more American lives – lately, from 7-21 to 7-25, a thousand American deaths a day.”
 
That we are quick to blame, yet slow to accept responsibility reflects poor leadership: Trump accepts credit, never blame. (He is everything we teach our children not to be.)
 
Perhaps we are all to blame – not for electing Trump president – for living our lives on this planet in such an all-consuming manner. Look at it this way: If I take from my neighbor, I must give something back. Yet, we take from our neighbors the beasts of the forest (who have families of their own) endlessly and give nothing in return. Perhaps a portion of the bill is due. Consider Newton’s principle: “For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.” I’m not saying this is what is happening. I’m saying, if this is not what is happening, then what will happen – the reaction – is coming.
 
We push nature to the brink without imagining nature pushing back. If we were willing to consider such an existential possibility – and more importantly, take responsibility on an existential scale for the petulance and our plundering – such an acknowledgment might instill in us the resolve to responsibly face down COVID. 
 
That may sound a bit provincial, even eccentric, but it is how real people in Hometown, America begin to thing when all of the responses to their questions begin with, “We don’t know…” These people have fundamental bread & butter wonderings. Today, I wonder with the best of them – the mother who, for the first time in her life wonders whether to send her children to school; the father, who wonders whether it is riskier to his family to go to work or stay home and subsist on a diet of chicken backs. 
 
We are in a place where ego and bad management has sent our COVID-19 fatalities skyrocketing – where bravery has become more important than saving lives. Who would have thought that we would be here at this predictable place? 
 
President Trump’s incompetence at handling the coronavirus has cost this nation thousands of lives, (and that’s being gentle). We can blame China, if we wish; we can blame Europe, wherefrom the strain that first infected the U.S. came. Or we can blame I on American arrogance – the notion that our system of government is so great that anyone can be president, even a morally bankrupt reality show star. Failing to expect an adverse reaction from our action at the polls is like putting a child behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, and not expecting that vehicle to careen out of control.  It is no coincidence that America has sustained far more fatalities from COVID-19 than any other nation on Earth. (The toddler behind the wheel has something to do with that.) We have played “footsies with a virus that is as opportunistic as the wind. Leave a door open, and it’s coming in. 
 
What if this pandemic is just getting started? What if it harbors a virulence we are yet to see? How much more of this before we are pushed to the brink? We appear to be frightfully ill-equipped to deal with the inconvenience. How would we pampered people deal with true desperation? If our current behavior is any indication, it does not look good.
 
Our karma-esque experience with COVID fits a narrative that permeates the universe. With its reciprocal “What goes around comes around” nature, we find ourselves caught in its vortex, and we flail like a fish in an invisible net. 
 
Yet, despite the tribulations, this is a good time for the people of this country to bask in a new introspection. Survival is not enough. We must confront ourselves – we must come out of this nightmare with humility, and with an appreciation for what we have learned, and what we have salvaged. If we cannot do that, then it will all be for naught. We will bemoan our losses, instead, and repeat this moment with more dreadful results.