The Virus

 The Virus

 

It seemed to have come from nowhere, but in reality, it had been around for a few months in a small part of China.

Scientists initially thought it originated in Bats and then managed to jump species to us…humans, but some people, and by ‘some people’ I mainly mean the media, thought that it was too much of a coincidence that China had a biological warfare laboratory only yards from where the first incidence of the virus was reported to have come from.

Across the world, front-page headlines pronounced the virus had somehow escaped from a laboratory and had been manufactured as a biological weapon, but this was never proved and strongly denied by the Chinese authorities. They did just about everything possible to show that the virus had originated in a live-animal market in a small village that just happened to be near the laboratory.

A few people tried to focus on the man-made synthetic-virus-thing for a while but very quickly it was swept under the proverbial carpet because there were far more important things to worry about…like how on earth was China going to contain the highly contagious pathogen and stop it from spreading, but to be honest, at that point in time the rest of the world thought it was nothing to worry about. The world had seen many new viruses appear and then disappear within a relatively short period of time, and besides, the new virus only seemed to cause problems in the elderly and infirm with symptoms that appeared to be nothing more than you would expect from a bad cold, or at worst, like flu.

How wrong they were.

Within little more than a few days of the reported outbreak, people were shown on TV news broadcasts dropping like flies, although again it seemed as if the vast majority of the victims were the elderly and people with underlying health problems, except this wasn’t exactly true.

As the days passed it became clear that the virus could infect everyone, young and old and there was no rhyme or reason why some would die, some had mild symptoms and  and others were completely asymptomatic showing no symptoms at all.

That was the most worrying thing about the damned thing. It was not knowing how badly you might be affected. Would you live or die?

The virus caused severe respiratory problems in a lot of people which quickly led to pneumonia and the need for oxygen and possibly put on a ventilator….which again to the untrained doesn’t sound too bad, until you learn that you have to be heavily sedated and stay in intensive care in a hospital for weeks.

China put on a show for the world and shut down whole cities and regions with a comprehensive lockdown, allowing no-one out of their homes…at all. Food was brought to their door by officials in full hazmat suits and respirators, they were for all intents and purposes, prisoners in their homes.

The west looked on in amazement. We can see the problem China has but we would never let that happen here.

Wrong.

Within weeks the virus had spread like wild-fire from one country to the next, and the next, and so on, until within a couple of months the virus had infected millions of people and countries across the globe.

Country after country reluctantly put their people into lockdown causing economies around the world to fall into recession and millions of people began to lose their jobs as companies collapsed.

A small consolation that came out of the gloom and despair was less fossil-fuel was used because no-one was traveling by plane or car so the air pollution reduced massively which made the sky seem a much deeper blue than normal. Birdsong became more prevalent and certainly seemed louder than before.

Around the world hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people had died from the virus but eventually after a few months of isolation for the masses, the now infamous R number had reduced below one sufficiently enough that the virus was no longer being spread amongst the population.

The R number is the reproduction number and it’s a way of rating a disease's ability to spread.

It is the number of people that one infected person will pass the virus on to, on average, so when it’s below one, that means one person in reality, is no longer passing the virus on.

That’s good.

So, after approximately 3 months, the lockdown was relaxed and businesses were slowly allowed to re-open. People were extremely slow at first to go out and go shopping or visit their local restaurant or café, understandably so. For weeks and months they had been told in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t venture out because the virus was so dangerous that if it didn’t kill you, it would kill your nearest and dearest, and then all of a sudden they were released from their cages and told…go outside…it’ll be fine…don’t worry.

It didn’t take too long for people to return to some kind of normality, meeting friends for coffee, visiting friends and loved ones in their homes, nights out, barbeques, parties. But the devious, dangerous virus had not gone away, it had just decided to hide away, waiting for any opportunity to find its next victim, and of course with everyone mingling, hugging, cuddling and kissing it rapidly returned.

Here we go again everyone thought.

The governments of the world all chose their own way of introducing local restrictions to curb the spread of the virus and it worked, but everyone knew that all the restrictions did was to kick another outbreak further down the road. The only way this virus was going to be beaten was a vaccine.

A vaccine had always been a top priority for all the drug companies and governments, but they take time…and money. Huge amounts of money. The drug companies all told the media that they were not doing the research for monetary gain and if they found a vaccine and a cure they would not profit from it. The people weren’t stupid and knew they would probably make mountains of cash from a vaccine, but to be honest, they didn’t much care. All everyone wanted was to return to normal.

The world had had enough.

After a winter of see-sawing back and forth from restrictions to freedom and back again, goodness knows how many times, it was announced a vaccine and a cure had been found and was finally ready to roll out to the world’s population…all 8 billion of them.

A vaccination program like the planet had never seen was put in place by all governments and countries of the world and within a few short months it had been done.

The world could pat itself on its back. What an achievement. Every person on earth had been vaccinated and The World Health Organization declared the virus had been defeated and was extinct…just like the world beat Smallpox.

Fantastic.

As usually happens after a period of doom and gloom the world seemed to go crazy. Everywhere there were parties, concerts celebrating this and that, people travelling from one side of the planet to the other in celebration of just being alive. Economies recovered and even performed better than before the pandemic. People were out spending money now they were back at work and as we all know, there’s nothing like retail-therapy.

Life was back to normal…including the overindulgence of everything imaginable.

Weeks of virus-free life seemed to rush by, then turning into months without hardy a comment from the media who were now focusing their knife-sharp single mindedness on political issues, such as whose fault was it that no government saw the virus coming and which major international company was going to sue which government first.

The media whipped everyone, of just about every county, up into a frenzy of blame and then of course the lawyers saw a chance to make millions, if not billions from legal claims.

‘Were you affected by the virus?’ signs were everywhere. On the side of buses, taxis, in newspapers, all over social media. If you stood still too long you were either handed a ‘Whose fault is it?’ leaflet or approached by someone with a clipboard promising to make you a fortune by claiming compensation from the government for their mismanagement of the pandemic.

People knew nothing like the virus had happened on a global scale like this before and proclaimed in public, when asked, that they had every sympathy with the government and scientists, while secretly suing anyone and everyone they could find in a bid to profit from the misery everyone had just been through with lockdown after lockdown and the curbing of their civil liberties…as they saw it.

As the world slowly returned to a semblance of normality, there lurked a certain unease in the back of everyone’s mind that one day the virus would return and what would the world do? No-one could go through it all again. No-one.

It’s funny isn’t it how the seasons of our gloriously beautiful planet can change the human mood. During autumn, when the foliage of trees and plants turn from a vibrant green to fabulous shades of golden browns, sunset yellows, and bonfire reds and oranges, we slowly start to get ready for the cold and wet that’s to come during the overcast, dull greyness of winter, sometimes interspersed with the brightness of snow, frost, and ice. The icy cold and chilling winds drive us all indoors, making sure the doors and windows are sealed and shut tight to keep out the freezing breath of Jack frost.

 The days shorten until we rise from our warm, snuggly beds in the dark, to travel to work in the dark. We toil all day in an air-conditioned office or workroom, only to return home in the dark, restless to able sit down by a warm fire and doze in the dancing flames of the burning coals and wood logs until it's time for bed when we have to dash into bed hoping you remembered to switch on the electric blanket.

Winter slowly turns into spring as the days lengthen and the temperature begins to rise. We marvel at how the trees burst into tiny green buds of life even though we’ve seen it happen every year since as far back as we can remember. The rays of golden light from the sun seem brighter somehow. We’ve been through the darkness of winter and everything seems brighter and more alive now. Which of course it is. That’s what SPRING is. It’s a rebirthing.

That glorious optimism of life regenerating rapidly swings into full-blown summer where days seem to become longer by the second and the warmth of the sun’s rays covers everything making life seem so much better than during the dull, depressing, greyness of winter. Summer is a wonderful time of year.

The people of the world have returned to feeling safe again and the memory of the virus dwindles with every morning sunrise and glorious evening sunset.

The trouble is….nature has a frightening way of letting planet earth and humanity know who is in charge.

Occasionally, there were reports on dolphins or whales, or sometimes both together, beaching themselves on coastlines around the world. This was nothing new and happened all the time except this time the scientists believed they had found the reason. For years it had been thought that these incredibly intelligent creatures had lost their way for some reason and found themselves in water that was too shallow causing them to get stuck. But after many autopsies, the only conclusion that could be made from the data was that they had lung infections, and being highly intelligent, the poor creatures realised the only way to stop from drowning was to beach themselves on the shoreline. Makes sense.

As usual, the media publicized the first couple of beachings but very soon lost interest because in their eyes…a few dead whales or dolphins don’t sell papers or fill TV space on the news. Far better to have a war or a sex scandal about a prime minister or president somewhere.

Weeks passed with more and more dead whales and dolphins washing up all over the world and the sporadic fleeting mention on TV, but scientists began to sit up and take notice when shoreline creatures such as seals and otters started to die, followed by sea turtles. The world seems to have a real liking for sea turtles.

The media began to report the deaths as unknown because even the oceanographers and marine scientists had no idea what was happening. Then the environmentalists got involved and blamed the mass deaths on climate change and pollution, which in fairness seemed feasible at the time.

The whole world really started to take notice when there were reports of huge shoals of fish floating dead in every ocean from the Pacific to the Black sea. Sharks and Wrays of all sizes were dying in massive numbers along with every species of sea wildlife you could imagine and some you can’t.

What was happening? Why were the oceans dying?

Panic began to spread around the world along with the starvation of millions of people whose very existence relied upon getting their food from the ocean.

Then came the news. The terrifying news that the whole world had dreaded would happen. Scientists believed they had found what was killing marine life.

It was the Virus.

It had mutated and jumped species, except it had jumped more than one species and seemed to be able to move from one species to another with ease.

The media went wild, as they always do. Scaremongering with headlines of doom and gloom, saying it was the end of the world and of course it wasn’t long before the religious zealots reared their ugly heads. To them it had been written for eons that the world would come to an end through Armageddon and Judgement day would follow.

What a load of old rubbish.

Luckily, scientists and governments around the world came together and put all their differences aside, realizing this was extremely serious. If the Virus could kill just about everything in the oceans, it wouldn’t be long before it made the jump from the sea to the land…then there would really be trouble.

It’s amazing what can be achieved in a relatively short time when things are important. And when I say important, I don’t mean trillions-of-dollars-in-debt kind of important, I mean the end-of-the-world important.

No more humans has a way of focusing resources and the minds of all involved.

 

In what seems a very short time, which in reality was nearly six months, the media announced that there would be a global press announcement from the UN. This in itself wasn’t unusual. The UN had a habit of releasing global press announcements about pretty much anything it was involved with, from local civil wars to starving children in Africa…but this was different. The global announcement was to be with the UN, the World Health Organization, and just about every global group involving as many countries as you can imagine.

And here it is. The announcement.

‘Humanity was facing an unprecedented attack on its very existence with the virus mutating and infecting all the mammalian and aquatic life in the oceans of the world. Thousands of scientists from around the world have been working tirelessly to find an answer. And just as they did with the earlier virus, of which this current virus is a variant, have managed to use the very virus itself to develop a vaccine that can be used in the seas and oceans of the world. It can be ingested orally or absorbed through the gills of fish and other aquatic life. This is a tremendous breakthrough and means vaccination of the surviving life in the sea can begin immediately. It can be added to the water and should begin to protect the remaining life within hours.’

Now…at the time this was amazing. Yet again the scientists had come to humanity’s rescue. The vaccine was added to the oceans of the world and everyone around the globe held their breath in anticipation of saving what wildlife there was left in the seas.

Science is a wonderful thing. Scientists are generally amazing people guided only by facts, learning, and experiments to prove their hypotheses. The problem is politics can get in the way. When this happens it starts to get messy because politicians want to look good to their voters and don’t necessarily do the right thing…they do what they think will win them votes in the next election, which isn’t always the best thing for everyone. Politicians all over the world were fighting and clambering over themselves to be seen to be getting the most amount of vaccine added to their piece of sea just offshore from their patch. So huge quantities of the vaccine were added in some areas, and less in poorer areas around the world, making recovery of the wildlife much more sporadic, meaning things took much longer to recover than they should. But that’s life.

A huge problem that had been overlooked was that no-one had questioned whether it was safe to add this new vaccine to the oceans all around the world. You would have thought it would have been one of the first questions to be asked wouldn’t you, but it appears NO.

The scientists were under so much pressure from the politicians who had been hounded and relentlessly bullied by all types of media demanding an answer.

The trouble with the media is they want to sell their 24 hrs news channels to everyone who’ll listen, or sell as many newspapers as they can. They’re not scientists, they’re just people who think they know best because they write articles that people read every day, without really checking out the validity of the rubbish they’re writing.

And this is what happened here.

The media were publishing what people wanted to hear. Social media is a wonderful thing but it’s full of false news. I think an American President used to bang-on about false news everywhere, and in this case, it was true.

The scientists were forced into releasing a vaccine into the sea because of false news generated across the world by social media and made legitimate by the media and press world-wide.

To the world’s relief, the vaccine appeared to work and wildlife slowly began to recover.

In the meantime, Denmark who was the world’s leader in the supply of Mink had discovered a new virus in its Mink. The virus had mutated to infect the Mink and then mutated again to infect humans.

Here we go again.

The world immediately closed its borders when the findings were released, but guess what?...Yep…you’re right. It was too late. The virus was popping up all over the place. In countries next to Denmark first, then rapidly across Europe.

This vaccine was different. It was airborne as well as in droplets. Basically your worst nightmare.

People everywhere were used to self-isolating and although many thousands died it didn’t have the devastating effect everyone feared…thank goodness.

Now, you’d think humanity and nature had a pretty good understanding of how everything worked after years of scientists and their sometimes weird and wonderful experiments. Man, and by that I mean humans, is a damn clever species. We have sent men into space and to the moon, dived to the deepest part of the ocean, even fought off these microbial menaces we call viruses, but no-one in their wildest dreams ever dreamt of what was to come next.

Ever since humans have walked the earth and eons before that, bacteria and viruses have mutated time and time again infecting animals, humans, fish and sometimes, as we learned to our horror, all three at once, but now it was a game-changer.

All over the world reports were coming in of wildlife dying in huge numbers. Huge flocks of birds falling dead from the sky, millions of Wildebeest dead on the African savanna, along with Lions, Leopards, Cheetah, Hyena, what was left of the Rhino, all the mammals you could think of. Dead. Cattle, pigs, sheep all over the world, dead. Even when the farm animals were kept indoors they managed to become infected and die.

But.

Why weren’t humans dying? What the hell was going on?

Had God decided he..or she..or it, or whatever it is, was going to kill everything and make us all watch and starve to death?

Well…yes.

Soon after the initial die-off of mammals, something very peculiar began to happen. The carcasses didn’t decay like they normally would. Usually, insects of all shapes and sizes infest the dead meat and start to eat it…we’ve all seen maggots in dead things. But now it was different. The carcasses would stay around for ages. It was also noted during the first autumn after the infection that there was no fruit…anywhere.

The insects were dying.

That may sound like a good thing but without insects, plants don’t get pollinated, decaying meat doesn’t get eaten. Insects perform so many things that go unnoticed that without them the whole ecosystem begins to collapse.

Next, it was Fungi.

The world was falling apart.

No mammals. No fish. No birds. No fruit or vegetables. No mushrooms.

Nothing decayed.

Everything had to be burnt to try and stop infection because although the virus had mutated many times killing almost everything, for some reason bacteria and other viruses were unaffected.

Nature can be a bastard.

The population of the planet began to reduce rapidly as the only source of food was plant matter. Food was manufactured from plants that were grown from old seed crops and then cloned again and again. It was the only way to feed the masses.

But…and you’ve guessed it.

Any farmer knows if you rely too heavily on one crop, your future cannot be guaranteed. You have to diversify your food crop, or any kind of blight attacking your crop will wipe you out.

And that’s what happened.

Well. Not exactly. It was the damned virus again. Not content with wiping all living things off the face of the earth, it had one more trick up its sleeve. It mutated again only this time into plants. It was unheard of…but it happened.

God was really out to cleanse the planet of humanity.

And he, she, it…was succeeding.

Slowly, but as surely as the sun rises in the morning, the plants began to die. The virus was relentless. It didn’t just seem to move from one species of plant to another at a steady pace…nope…it sprinted. One type of plant after another succumbed to the virus and to add doom to utter gloom, the virus had another nasty kick in its tale.

One of the final mutations of the virus was to change the genetic structure of the remaining plants, which made them all incredibly poisonous, so toxic in fact that death came within minutes. Even touching the plants caused severe burns with nausea and sickness that could last for many days.

Well…that was the end. How could humanity survive an onslaught like that?

The virus had won.

A non-thinking, brainless, microscopic, invisible to the naked eye, microbial had succeeded in killing just about every living thing on the once beautiful planet earth.

Going back millions of years the planet had endured many mass extinctions, mainly caused by meteor impacts of such huge size that many life forms were killed in the blast and the ensuing climate change, but this time it was different. The virus had been an indirect consequence of human interaction with nature and wildlife. If humans had been more understanding of how nature worked, instead of being so selfish and demanding ever-increasing living standards coupled with profits for huge multinational companies, then maybe it would have dawned on everyone that there is a balance with nature…with everything. Over-do something and something else suffers.

What’s the old saying?...

‘Everything in moderation.’

And how true that is.

Excess was the death of humanity and Homo sapiens sapiens as a species. 

Well…almost.

There are few of us left, scattered around over the surface of the planet. We communicate via old fashioned ham radio sets powered by old car batteries charged by the sun and wind turbines. I estimate that once when there were approximately 9 billion people crammed onto the surface of this planet, now there can only be a few thousand, maybe ten thousand. That just about puts humans on the endangered species list, well, not quite but you know what I mean. There’s virtually none of us left.

I’m old now with grey hair and a bushy grey beard that itches like crazy.

I can vividly remember the days before the virus.

This is better.

What? I can hear you scream. How can it be?

The pace of life is slow. Yes it can be hard but what’s important is making sure we have wood for a fire, enough food to eat, staying healthy…which I can tell you is not easy without antibiotics, but at least it’s not hectic like it used to be. And who would've thought we could live without plastic.

Amazing.

Food? I thought everything was killed by the virus?

Yes, it was. Almost. And that’s the key. Almost.

The virus had killed just about everything it had come into contact with, so eventually, there was no food left for it and it just dwindled to nothing. The handful of people, animals, and plants that survived were able to begin again, and we are always careful to avoid certain areas where we feel the virus might be. We certainly don’t want to ignite that flame again.

So.

The world has been reset.

We are starting again. We’ll be fine.

I’ve finished this account of the Great Reset so I won’t be writing anymore. If someone finds this after I’m long gone and fertilizing the vegetable patch, I hope you learn one thing from it.

Nature is your god. Respect it and it will look after you.

 

The End