DOSSIER 08

Karma Virus

Published 4 min readUpdated
Pale grey coronavirus particles against a black background

Through every cycle, every century, there have been pandemics, they have been part of the history of humanity ever since we settled down and from the moment we decided to shut living beings away and exploit them. Zoonoses, infectious diseases transmissible from animals to humans, will become more and more frequent if humanity keeps up its headlong rush towards the massive destruction of its ecosystem. The transmission of these pathogens from wildlife to humans is the cost of economic development and runaway industrialisation.

We create systematic biological aberrations that have serious consequences for the biosphere. A study published in the journal Nature concludes that the exploitation of land for intensive agriculture, which brings humans closer to wild animals whose habitat is disturbed, makes the appearance of pandemics such as Covid-19 more likely. According to this study, the viruses carried by wild animals are more at risk of being transmitted to humans because of the way the exploitation of forests, seas and soils is developing.

The growth and the speed of migration flows and of trade on a global scale, the increase in human pressure on many of the globe's ecosystems (because of deforestation and urbanisation in particular), climate change as well as the collapse of health systems in some countries all help to explain this rise in emerging zoonotic diseases.

Overpopulation heightens these phenomena. There are more and more of us, we occupy more and more places that are still untouched and at the same time we are more and more exposed to the repercussions of these impacts. We create opportunities for these viruses to be transmitted more easily, but we are surprised when it happens.

Ever since man began to build cities, ports, factories, landfills, the foundations of our modern society, he has clustered together, crowded together and cut himself off from his natural habitat. Like a virus or a kind of invasive species, he has mutated and harmfully infected his environment.

This is nothing like a vague theory, mass exterminations, intensive farming, the exploitation of nature, deforestation, the captivity of wild animals, industrial consumption without any awareness have nothing left to prove about Man's talent for destroying his environment. What other form of life behaves this way if not a bacterium or a virus?

When humans go to war against nature, they create upheavals, they break the sacred balance and nature will inevitably end up rebelling, zoonoses are in the end the result of this eco-logical defence mechanism of our ecosystem, represented in this Vega theory as one and the same organism.

The first indisputable written traces of a plague pandemic date from the 6th century. But according to a recent study, the disease is thought to have arrived from Asia nearly 5000 years ago.

In the scientific literature, pandemics and viruses are very well known. These are not the first, nor the last. Scientists are far from astonished by the current situation. The only thing we cannot predict is the exact date and the level of spread. Pandemics are part of the history of man but viruses have been part of the history of the world for billions of years, if a confrontation is inevitable, it is not hard to guess who will win.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is permanently preparing for the next “disease X”, the nickname given to the next health threat that could strike the planet. While the destruction of the habitat of countless living species that are reservoirs of viruses potentially deadly to man is intensifying worldwide, the present coronavirus pandemic could be only the beginning of an era of international pandemics.

All pandemics, whether the Spanish flu (avian genes) transmitted by poultry but above all by their industrial exploitation, swine flu or Ebola. Are always caused by the same processes, man does not respect nature and its laws.

And yet he still manages to wonder why we are suffering such punishments and loves to cast himself as the eternal victim, brandishing all kinds of fictitious conspiracies without recognising that the human being is the main pathogen and the one responsible for these imbalances, the inevitable consequences of his madness.

Humanity too often forgets that it is only a guest and allows itself to build a failing world, arrogant and unaware of these fundamental laws, putting up a house of cards based on values that are completely anthropocentric and flawed.

Whatever the money, the technology and all the gadgets used to protect ourselves or to innovate, whatever all those walls put up, those sorts of sticking plasters on a world in ruins will be useless.

This vain and alienating modern system is closing in on itself. And since we are all pedalling inside it, we are therefore all responsible. Individual work on our awareness is necessary and in the end collective work too, for a healthier, fairer future... a return to the source, to the essential, is indispensable and to avoid this kind of health crisis in the future.

This work on awareness that we are striving to carry out is under way, stay tuned.

Alex Vega Lynn

Army of Nature ⚡

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