Chameleon (credit: Wikipedia) 

A Covid 19 Lesson

There are a number of interesting lessons from these corona virus pandemic times that occur to me every day. But it is always the largest principles that I can spot in the reams of experiences occurring day after day that fascinate me the most. Big general principles are the ones that enable us to do more than react. Big principles enable us to be pro-active, to design policy, general guidelines for living now and in the future. These lead to less pain in the long haul.

Today, I want to talk about one of those larger lessons.

Reality is what it is. Observations of reality by us imperfect observers should always aim to report facts. What really happened. At least as far as I or you – as observers – can tell at the time. A chameleon really can be orange one minute, then purple the next, then blue a further minute later. But the person who reports that s/he saw the same individual lizard change its colors isn’t lying to me. S/he is just reporting what was really seen. If I am a Renaissance skeptic, then I might go to a place where there are chameleons and try to verify the story and satisfy my curiosity. Or I might not. But at least the storyteller should be telling me what she really saw. I like and appreciate that. Hers is a report that I may use at some time in the future. Who knows? I might be in a plane crash, survive on a jungle island in the Pacific, and have to hunt chameleons to stay alive. Then, having a true reporting of an observation by a trusted friend in my memory might make a crucial difference in my life.

   

                                     (credit: rickjpelleg, via Wikimedia Commons) 

The larger point, larger than any point about chameleons, is that we keep trying, in spite of our limits as observers, to see reality as it is and to use that knowledge to handle our encounters with the more hazardous things in reality.

I’ve never seen an individual Covid virus. I never will. They barely show up in electron microscopy images. But I’ve seen the virus images that experts in the field of immunology have certified as being reasonably accurate. And I have seen plenty of testimonials in the media by people who have been sick with the illness that this particular version – Covid 19 – causes in humans. And I trust those experts and those reports more than any alternatives I’ve seen so far.  

Why? Because I have no access to an electron microscope and I would not know much about what I was looking at anyway, if I did get access to one.

I don’t trust …I …don’t …trust …people who have no record of expertise in the specialized fields related to full understanding of the Covid 19 pandemic, no evidence to support their views, and clear cut records of defying what science has to tell us about almost everything. Global warming. Systemic racism. Inner city poverty. Homophobia. Statistics. I could go on and on.

I’ve been shown evidence that the scientists’ positions on all of the issues above and many more are biased. But that’s not what my own experience is telling me, and not what the overwhelming weight of evidence from sources that do have real credentials and work records in the related fields are saying to me.

So I’ll end now and keep this essay short.

Why am I largely ignoring the cries of protest of people who aim to discredit the scientific consensus that is nigh on to 100% on the pandemic under which we are currently suffering?

I go with my best horses. The ones that have won the most races for me in the past. I was a kid when polio was running rampant in my home province. I recall the desperate joy we felt when a polio vaccine became available. I have read, and I believe, accounts of the suffering humanity has experienced from microbes like smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and so on. We have vaccines for them all now. Immeasurable suffering has been prevented. 

I gamble with my life in reality every day. I have to. Reality will not sit still to soothe my fears and reality is full of hazards that I must navigate.  

I’m going with my best horses.

I am not going with opinions from people who are not experts, are ill-informed, have no scientific consensus to back up their claims – or a few anecdotal cases which, if one knows statistics, are simply not reliable – or who (worst of all) repeatedly reach conclusions that support some political stance they favor. Reality has no political stance. 

I’ll go with my best horses. I want to go home from the racetrack today, and to start tomorrow, at least breaking even. Not getting sick or injured. Not running out of food or shelter.

I’ll go with my best horses.