When you throw peanuts, you will find monkeys when you will discard straw, you will get landfills. In India and in Goa particularly we find plenty of statues and samadhis thrown around by our political class as we idiots amongst us in plenty deriving immense pleasure in erecting memorials amidst utter poverty, pestilence and disease. There have been plenty of debates and splitting of hair in Goa over illegally installed roadside symbolic religious artefacts placed at every nook and corner of Goa. Often these structures are maintained in spite of them being a hazard to public transport mobility and pedestrian risks.
We prefer to live and often die on an empty stomach in a morbid environment extremely rich in ritualistic practices full of faith and hope that some unknown and invisible super power would bless and bestow upon us abundance of grace and materialistic blessings. This is not to invoke spirituality amongst my readers. It is centred on finding answers to the increased pestilence and imminent mortality in Goa.
Those living in the slums and babies brought up in a poor hygienic environment show better immunological response to those living in a cosy air conditioned environment. Many know our immunity response too became specialised. Hence we see a differentiated response to microbial attack in both animals & man.
Earlier we have all seen as to how fowls, cattle, swine or any other animals died all around us thus causing economic losses to the poultry farmer. Today there is no segregation of species. There is a significant rise in the incidences of zoonotic diseases. Now it is common knowledge that the mad cow disease, sars, mers, coronavirus, chicken HINI particles or monkey fever is transmitted to man via the animal host; man now gives better attention to animal care.
Adversities are considered the Mother of Inventions. It is only in the most challenging situations that man either stands up to the challenges or succumbs meekly. Men are working to find ways to contain viral epidemics and pandemics, yet we also find witch doctors, fake spiritual leaders and ritualistic tantric capitalising by offering rituals, symbolic prayer meetings thus defeating the basis of isolation and quarantine support systems.
In the 19th and the early 10th centuries it was worms, insects, fungi and bacterial pathogenesis which were challenging man with virulence and disease. Amoebic dysentery, filarisis, malaria, tape and round worm infection, fungal poisoning, typhoid, cholera, plague, leprosy, tuberculosis today are nearly a part of medical history. Alexander Flemming, Selman Waksman, Robert Koch, and Luis Pasteur among others produced chemo therapeutic drugs and vaccines playing a vital role to control the diseases. Strangely today the challenges of protozoa bacteria, fungi and yeast are under control momentarily. However, the new challenges of viruses and chemical pollutants are now threatening humanity.
If we look at the human body we would find much less grains of sand on the beaches, than the number of cells in one human. We have over trillions of cells in our body. How the virus in the coronavirus is able to take perfect control over human body is amazing, best known to the gene doctors and genetic engineers.
It is impossible to explain in details as it would amount to emptying an ocean in a hole carved in sand in our beaches. Yet we must learn from history as to how Moghuls, Portuguese, French and the English conquered the Indian Empire, so that we can keep our control on the emerging threats of viruses in Goa. Why Goa is fighting against pestilences is because we have allowed our health to be traded for wealth, acquired by our greedy politicians and lazy citizenry.
Maka kiteak poddlam? Goan society with Dev sogllench poita ani kont ghetolo attitude is ruining Goa and Goans. We Goans stand up only if we are personally affected. It is govt duty, says the public. It must be right and sacred hence judiciary does not come down heavily on politicians squandering public money. Similarly the viruses, quietly enter the human body and use the body nutrients to build up viral particles just as politicians use public money for self-benefits. For controlling viruses, we must recognise the presence of them by direct morphological studies. Sadly we do not have a single electron microscope to study the morphology of any virus in Goa. Our body too remains often silent and dormant to the growth of the virulent pathogens. Malignancy in cancers due to viral pathogens or chemical inducement is sadly not recognised by our body in cancer patients in particular we don’t recognise our political class is destroying Goa, so also our body does not believe that viral cancers are bad.
The way as to how virus RNA or DNA is genetically very exciting and I will explain in my next essay but for an average Goan, it would suffice to say that just as our political “dalals” in Goa are buying and selling Goa for a song and posing as social workers thus destroying Goa and the Goans the cancers in human body are caused by malignant cells often due to virus, which pose as normal cells. It is only when organs are damaged we wake up to the tragedies of realities. We must understand viruses and our political classes are birds of the same feathers and unless we take upon ourselves more budget for research in health and medical sciences instead of statues and samadhi, the viral degradation and political deterioration will continue to destroy us all.
(The writer is a retired University Professor.)
