The 21st century is the most advanced technological era and human progress has reached a new height with the help of modern technological advancements. This is the era of the quantum computer, nuclear fusion technology (hydrogen bomb), space travel, 5G Internet, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are in their high end and medical science has reached its peak. It’s an era of human genome decoding; humans are looking for disease treatment by gene therapy or modify gene using CRISPR technology.
Medical science can understand human diseases much better than ever before. Synthesis of drugs is higher in production; life expectancy is higher than ever before. Human’s have controlled most things using technology. After all of these successful human progresses, what has reset the world at this present moment?
Power of Microbes in Human History
The world has reset many times in the past and at present by a small invisible microorganism, i.e. bacteria/virus. In the 16th century, it was smallpox which had devastating effects on humankind by killing 40–50 million people.
This smallpox pandemic was caused by a smallpox virus which was not created or innovated in any laboratory, nor was it carried over by a third party. It transmitted human to human without costing a single dollar. This is smallpox pandemic in 16th century reset the world into a stop mode for a while until we recovered from it. This smallpox virus is still a challenge, although we have developed a vaccine for it.
Similarly, we have seen many of these resets in the past as the 17th century Great Plague and 18th-century Yellow Fever. In the 19th century, there was the Great Plague, Cholera, Third Plague and Russian Flu which took more than 15 million lives. The 20th century saw the Spanish Flu, Asian Flu and Hong Kong Flu which killed more than 52 million people, as many as were seen during World War II.
Present Challenges and A Reset
Today, the same microbe (coronavirus) infections and their death are not able to stop yet, it’s ongoing in this present 21st century. It started in 2002 with SARS killing 770 people, Swine Flu/H1N1 with 2,00,000 deaths, Ebola with 1,13,000 deaths, MERS with 850 deaths till today and now the COVID-19 pandemic killing 2,10,000 till now.
This COVID19 pandemic completely reset/paused the world into months of lockdown; every activity around the world has stopped. All business and shopping have closed for months by locking down people in their own home by force to avoid the COVID19 infection fear and its consequences are death.
This powerful microbe showed the world how invisibly powerful and effective it is in the world as a whole, especially to humankind, no matter the advances in medical facility and pharmaceutical companies of the world. Today, they all surrender to this small microscopic microbe for months. This invisible microbe has reset the world order. Today, we are helpless in front of it. People fear the coronavirus infection and are hiding in their homes.
This present scenario shows that the post-COVID-19 effect will be more severe than what we are facing at this moment. It will change human social interaction into a new dimension. No more handshaking, hugging or kissing in society. This approach will surely impact people’s day to day life with more misery than we expected. Post COVID-19, people will socially distance with a fear of virus’ return.
From this, we can conclude that we should never underestimate these small microscopic organisms. They are as powerful as a nuclear bomb or a hydrogen bombs; more powerful than humans.