7 Reasons to Love Coronavirus

As of February 29, 2020, there have been at least 20,000 US deaths from flu — not the coronavirus, regular old influenza. And as I start to compose this article, the new kid on the virus block, corona, has killed about 3,000 worldwide, but it’s coming on strong. (A full comparison is at LiveScience.com.) In the face of those morbid facts — or more to the point, because of those morbid facts — I’d like to present a counterpoint to the 24-hour news cycle, which by its own DNA is programmed to pour jet fuel on the already-blazing bonfire of fear.

But I should emphasize, mine is not an anti-science angle of any sort. Nor will it be political spin that pooh-poohs some imagined world in which only liberals care about avoiding a deadly threat. Instead I’m trying to spray some rationality on the bonfire.

1. The first reason to love corona is that all systems need stress tests or, instead of failing incrementally and reversibly, they will fail only totally and catastrophically… and that would be worse. We don’t want that for mankind’s DNA or any aspect of our civilization. So if you don’t have stress tests, you don’t have health. To use an analogy from the software world, if you’ve never had to try to restore your data from your ‘backups,’ then you don’t really have backups. It’s not until the system cracks that you learn whether and how it can be fixed. Corona is showing us the stress points in, for instance, the global push toward ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing and inventory processes; massive cruise ships; and globalization overall. We are all as close as a plane flight, and that closeness has both good and bad.
2. A deadly outbreak of a communicable disease causes us to rebalance some of the trends of society, such as business travel that has really become excessive. Much of business travel is just an excuse for other inefficiencies or problems that are not solved the right way. Even local business commuting is often wasteful… in the name of micromanagement. During the US oil shortage of the 1970’s businesses learned how to greatly increase work from home. And it’s great to leverage the strengths of other nations, but times like this show the risk of outsourced reliance on single economies and nations. Hybrids always win (Bellis’s Law) so large economies must always have substantial onshore or multi-national sources… not just one source.
3. Outbreaks like this are ‘healthy’ reminders that it’s about our immune system… not just the presence of viruses or other threats. These diseases threaten the old and infirm to a much greater extent than those who are younger and more resistant. We are surrounded (and infiltrated) by germs of all kinds. Remember the news cycle where we learned that families with dogs had children with fewer maladies? The body is one big filter. Exercise it, take it outside a lot. Take it for a walk.
4. Corona is just ONE aspect of civilization being attacked, our DNA. Yes, I’m telling you that you can rationally appreciate that a “virus attack” is but one mode of attack on mankind. I can imagine something worse… something that threatens our entire biosphere. Any guesses anyone? With a viral attack we have knowledge, tools, point solutions, and at least a chance of solving the problem in isolation — by isolation — if ultimately necessary, which seems to be the case. We should be so lucky with global warming which requires us to undo 100 years of dumping carbon into the atmosphere, along with almost every country clinging to fossil fuels as their lifeblood.
5. Perhaps we can all supplant just a tiny bit of our fear with an appreciation of the miracle and beauty of DNA… which is what corona virus is. Viruses are merely rogue snippets of DNA that need need a living host. And you might also take solace in the notion that Mother Nature probably didn’t program them to kill off their entire host population. But I’m not actually selling that point. :) ]If you don’t know much about this most-magical foundation of our lives and existence, read a book like The Gene, by Siddhartha Mukherjee… or just peruse a few web pages. The pictures alone are staggering. You might think of them as the opposite of zombies (post life), so viruses are sort of pre-life. They’re little havoc-wreakers who get inside your cells and do some nasty partying, until they have to move on to the next house and trash that one. They epitomize the cellular blueprinting-copying method that is at the genesis of all life. But in a nice “turnabout is fair play,” we seem to have figured out how to make them our servants in the battle against various diseases, ‘sic-ing’ them on problem spots such as cancer, to deliver corrective measures. It’s not all bad.
6. It’s not ebola. Do you know what “hemorrhagic fever” means? Consider reading the Hot Zone by Richard Preston… or just the first 50 (?) pages… about which no less than Stephen King said, “One of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” If my memory serves me well, hemorrhagic fever means, for instance, getting on an airplane in one continent with an incipient fever, and by the time you get off in another continent, your insides are gushing out through every hole in your body. Imagine… corona could be like that but it’s just a routine flu-like disease. Be thankful.
7. My final reason to love coronavirus, and really the only reason I’m writing this article is this: it is a teachable moment that can help us get it through our collectively thick skulls that there is a supreme difference between wealth and busy-ness. Coronavirus DOES NOT SUBSTANTIALLY DECREASE THE WEALTH OF SOCIETY. It temporarily decreases the busy-ness of society, which we spell ‘business.’ Busy-ness is how much we travel and dine out and vacation and luxuriate and burn unsustainable fuels and so on. Wealth is how much food, clothing, shelter, and healthiness we produce. Of course the two are inextricable and business does include the production of food/clothing/shelter/healthcare, but the two are very different things. Business can go up and down, and does so incessantly, without collapsing wealth. In fact we are now in a stage of civilization — the age of over-abundance — where wealth is constantly, rapidly, and inexorably expanding. Even before coronavirus we struggle with equitable distribution. Now, the distribution problem is ratcheted up tenfold. So we can and must worry about business contracting, and we must take countermeasures and help those affected or we will surely send our economy into a tailspin. But we must also break the habit of knee-jerk reactions to hardships and catastrophes as if the wealth of society is collapsing. It is not; only its distribution.

Now, as I finish editing this article about four days later, another 1,500 people have died from coronavirus worldwide. Wow. But maybe my thoughts have made you feel just slightly more at ease about the situation? Me neither.