Pandemic- Changing the Lens

The world is gripped by a very serious and scary reality right now. The latest Coronavirus to plague the planet is wreaking havoc and causing suffering and death around the world. The economy is halted, people are isolated, we live in fear, and we seem to have lost our hope.

Without hope we are more vulnerable to the COVID19 virus, of that there is absolutely no doubt.

How can hope prevail in such dangerous and horrifying times?

It can, that's the first thing to understand.

It needs to, that's the second thing we need to understand.

Hope Alliance is in the business of hope. Here's how hope can get you, and the entire human race past this global crisis so we can prevail as more resilient and unified in our belief in all things true, beautiful and good.

The nature of a pandemic is an interesting thing to consider. From The Guardian in the UK...

What is a pandemic?

Declaring a pandemic has nothing to do with changes to the characteristics of a disease, but is instead associated with concerns over its geographic spread. According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic is declared when a new disease for which people do not have immunity spreads around the world beyond expectations.

It's interesting to me that the classic definition of a pandemic according to the WHO is relative to "concerns over its geographic spread" as opposed to the nature of the disease, and in particular the condition that immunity to it doesn't exist so it "spreads around the world beyond expectations." The whole world was still like a sheet glass pond on a windless day, then all of a sudden a trillion pebbles were tossed in the pond at the same time and  the ripples started to collide, and they will keep doing that until the last two ripples bump into each other without the power to cause another one.

It would seem to me that the same conditions that define a pandemic could also define the conditions of reawakening. It's so hard to apply a positive connotation to something that is so devastating, but what choice do we have? I have seen incredible things occurring since the beginning of this pandemic. People are thinking, and they're rethinking. They are creating new contexts and paradigms. They are doing things differently. Most importantly they are questioning conventions that may very well have added fuel to this pandemics fire.

More than ever, now is the time to do this. Coronavirus is biology, and it's math. The nature of the virus transcends all subjective forms of faith, chance, luck and any other form of thought derived in our limited minds to cope with difficult realities. We can explain how this virus works, and we know what it will and won't do as long as we remember to apply quantifiable knowledge about biology, patterns, statistics etc. We can't pray this virus away. We have to think it away. Starting with the World Health Organization and all like purposed health and wellness organizations throughout the globe, we need to follow the directions of people and organizations who know. We need to RESPECT that they know better than we do, and we need to respect what they are saying.

There is enough knowledge about how COVID19 replicates and transfers from person to person to UNDERSTAND how to take care our ourselves, and at the same time everyone else by following the directions of people and organizations who know, so we can limit the transmission of the virus as effectively and efficiently as possible.

The human need to connect with others will always be present, and critical to our physical and mental well-being. We can't connect in the same way we did before COVID19, but we can certainly stay connected through virtual and online outlets. The world is learning about this very quickly, and rather ironically as prior to the pandemic society has often been critical toward youth who appeared to depend on their online social connections, now we're learning from them how to get and maintain online social RELATIONSHIPS.

It's now never been more important to take collective RESPONSIBILITY for flattening the curve of this pandemic and halting the virus in its tracks. Rash thinking, false hope in ethereal entities including the American president who knows literally nothing about what he speaks of... these are the antithesis of hope during this challenging time. In order to reawaken ourselves in a hopeful purpose and regain our health, the opportunities it provides us, the privileges it offers, and the education we require to handle the next pandemic from a more informed and knowledgeable perspective, we have to listen to the science behind the virus adn the lessons it is trying to teach us about how to do things differently to effect a more desirable result.

I came across this video today from the Twitter of @MyDoncaster. There is a quirky but so relevant series of messages derived from this story from 1970 on the wet coast of Oregon.

 

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The tweet stream below teaches us three things to be internalized as we navigate our hope perspective around the COVID19 Pandemic of 2020...

HOPE is derived out of action. Taking action that is based in knowledge that is scientifically irrefutable is wise. All other forms of "knowledge" will have to take a back seat on this one. There is nothing random about this pandemic. All of it was predictable, and most of it is preventable.

So just as a powerful virus can take on a pandemic scale, a pandemic of hope also can. Respecting the enemy, understanding how it works, nurturing interdependent and supportive relationships to combat its strengths, and ultimately taking responsibility to be rational and logical about our collective response to its threat is the new, hopeful pandemic that must envelop the world if we are to come out of this better and more resilient than we were before.