The unvarnished truth. We exist in a world that does not favor one specie over another. We may be the descendants of Adam and Eve, but we were not promised a favored place over other species. There were those that preceded us by ten million years or, like the dinosaurs, a lot closer, yet what we have is their remains as witness to their mortality. The truth is that we are continuously struggling against other species in their attempts to destroy us. We fight back and design new means of defending mankind. We learn how to protect ourselves and keep the enemy at bay while we probe its weaknesses and counterattack. It is a struggle that goes on as we watch for variants and the battle moves yet to another front. The years go by and we will have eradicated yet another enemy., as we did with polio two generations ago. A respite of some years goes by and another enemy appears either from a jungle somewhere attacking its first victim, human or other that opens the new cycle. It may be carried in our midst by the wind, or a bird during its migration. It may appear on a "wet market" that still caters to eating, or drinking the infected animal's raw parts, or it may evolve in a lab that seeks to develop deadly means on purpose. It may be loosened on the world by mistake, or by design. The fortunate thing is that they were spaced by relatively long periods of calm between the havoc caused by very dangerous ones. At that time this is at least partly due to the moderate concentration of humans in places around the globe. Other reasons are the wars and illnesses such as the London plague. Lately the population grew by impressive numbers in a more peaceful world. Mankind learned how to use technologies to improve itself in every generation since that time. Unfortunately, political games between countries lead to lack of fairness in relations as best seen at the United Nations. This dilemma may be resolved when mankind discovers that it is not alone in the universe, as can be expected. Only then the prospect of real fear about someone who is not at all like us, not human, a stranger in every respect with an intelligence that makes ours look like that of a child my make us unite in a common cause. We are seeing this common interest trending today as we are invaded by a virus. It moves from one variant to another arming itself with deadly destructive weapons keeping our scientists busy with responses. To our credit we appear to succeed due to our intelligence and to learned experience about this enemy. It is costing us in the number of lives lost before we succeed. We can say with certainty learned from centuries of experience that we will succeed in the fight against this virus. We can also affirm our belief in humanity's ability to overcome challenges imposed on us by nature and the environment. We can add that nature is our mother in the sense that it allowed us to evolve to the present stage. Much of our future is unwritten and before us. We can pray and ask for help when we feel the need to do so, but it i doubtful that it is enough without ourselves adding a good measure of our own. I am confident that we will succeed with Covid-19 and its variants. On a personal level my encounters with six different challenges are more complex than the last one. This is because surviving the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Border Crossings, the deadly auto accident and the Covid-9 required survival skills, good luck, the intervention of mother nature, intervention from other humans, from divinity and from destiny. ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Robert A. Sanford