As you all know today the entire world is facing the Covid-19 pandemic and even though we as a portal mostly deal with metaphysical, spiritual and religious matters, how could we isolate from a factor which is causing such a massive level catastrophe to the entire human kind. So though it might seem irrelevant for some people to link Covid with metaphysics we have tried to portray the link and also talk about a few issues from this perspective.
Ethical Angle: ethics is related to morals and principles which is closely associated with spiritualism and religion, hence you can see the underlying link. The reason why I am raising this question is that many medical experts are suggesting that instead if continuing the lockdown we should let it open in a controlled manner and allow the majority of the population to get infected in order to develop herd immunity. There are two reactions to it in the reader community.
1. People say that it is entirely unethical and immoral as no one has control over life and death but still deliberately pushing people towards risk of death could be considered as the highest form of immoral activity and represents the savage ages when experiments were performed in live human beings. Though these people are aware of the fact that it is not possible to indefinitely extend the lock-down and shutting down of economic activities, they say that life is more important than money and things should continue in that way.
It is also believed by these people that having the approach of herd immunity development deliberately portrays a very negative or pessimistic approach that vaccination could not be found for such cases and that it is only through deliberate exposure that we can overcome this. The ethical angle of making people as scapegoats is also troubling the souls of these people.
They also cite a recent report created by Director for CDDEP (published in Dainik Bhaskar newspaper 18 April 2020) which says that 65% of people should get infected to develop immunity of the herd. Considering a country like India it means that
65% of 1.3 billion = nearly 85 crores
As per a report of Economic Times the mortality rate in India is 3.04%
So 3.04% of 85 crores is 2.6 crores approximately
Even if we go down further and assume that only 10% of this population will actually be affected the numbers still are huge
at 26 lakhs
So the question is can we deliberately risk 2.6 million face grave risk of untimely mortality to develop herd immunity? is there no other alternative..
However we must also make it clear that the author of this report has not given these figures but only the 65% ratio required to develop herd immunity, the rest we have projected based on other relevant statistics such as mortality rate in India and its current population etc.
2. This school of thought believes that the problems faced by the lowermost strata of the society are not felt by the upper and medium classes and it is more of a lockdown of convenience and self preservation and so the ethics are equally strong in this scenario. If this theory is to be believed it means that the upper and medium classes which are housed comfortably in their own houses and secure environments are safe while the lower classes are as much exposed to the danger as they would be without any lockdown since they do not have ample spaces, large houses, and home delivery of all essential commodities despite government claims.
Usually whenever we present such arguments we arrive at a conclusion based on the strength of the arguments and in most cases the outcome is self evident. However this is a unique case, due to several reasons such as the geographical spread of the disease, covering nearly entire world and also impacting everyone to varying degrees. So it would be really difficult to reach a conclusion at this stage.
We leave it to our viewers to decide what they feel about this and also leave their comments about it. The most effective manner to decide in such a case is to follow the democratic process and do what majority of the people feel would be good for them, provided they are intelligent and reasonable enough to understand the implications of their decision and so far as it is for the common good of all. This may go against the established principle of doing the right thing irrespective of the opposition but then as they say drastic times require drastic measures so we leave the choice to the readers after this thought provoking message. You can meditate over the issue as this is not something which is a newspaper clipping news, it is something which affects my life as much as yours and your family and dear ones. So it is high time we start thinking about what next.
Note: the views presented in the article are entirely the personal opinion of the writer and Metaphysics Knowledge website or its associates do not take any responsibility for it.