Head to head does swine flu

This week’s topic: That swine flu proves humans are not masters of their domain

Peter Whitehead

“But the question is, are you still master of your domain?” Sorry – it’s a Seinfeld thing – I had to ask. Apologies to those unaware of the comic escapades of that neurotic neatnik New Yorker [Google ‘masters of their domain’ for more information]. As you may have heard: a wink is as good as a nod to a blind man, depending what sent him blind.

Enough of that distraction and on to the issue at hand – this week’s funny conundrum – and do we need another demonstration that humans are jumped up monkeys packing a handcart for hell?

The Old Testament is a venerable tome full of stories about the pre-Christian history of the Jews. Much wisdom resides therein. But there is one early howler, Genesis 1:26: Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’. A heady passage that, and more bewildering than the best Bolivian. Talk about planting the seed for a widespread delusional state spanning several millennia.
Cop a load of the planet under our dominion. We are masters of naught but self-destruction and environmental ruination.

Some sad days it seems all that thrive in these last days of our species are microscopic viruses morphing elusively to spread death through our overpopulated megalopolises.
The only effective defence from the panic of the A(H1N1) pandemic seems to be media hype. Headless Chicken Littles chirp breathless headlines of horror that make any eventual grim realities seem a Sunday stroll by the river [Styx].

In April we were told how we were going to die from the Swine Flu and in what numbers. The Mexican Day of Death was going global in pursuit of Belinda Neal and John Hogg. Just to be alive in July seems a medical miracle.

I wonder what they will come up with next year to get susceptible punters queuing for flu shots.

Andrew Woodhouse

Death rides triumphantly on his pale horse through our streets and breaks into every house. Now people fall as thick as the leaves in autumn, when they are shaken by a mighty wind.

Thus spoke Daniel Defoe in his hypnotic history, A Journal Of The Plague Year In London In 1665, as bubonic plague wiped out 100,000 citizens. Our first modern journalist, Defoe was also a successful trader, traveller and spy. He wrote Robinson Crusoe, an analogous fable of a man marooned on a desert island who overcame vicissitudes eating through to his human core and threatening his sense of identity.

Are we masters of our domain? We’ve propagated arrogance, ignorance and negligence, polluting the air, raping soil and infecting waterways. We’re like the dinner guest from hell who arrives, trashes the furniture, eats and leaves.  All this grandiloquence is based on the premise we’re masters of our domain. We’re not. The earth does not belong to us, we belong to it. It’s ours to nourish and nurture not rape and ruin. So science is crucial to understanding all life on it.

London’s plague was seen as God’s wrath upon his people. They publicly prayed showing its overseas origin and why God was unjust. They didn’t know how when or why it occurred, assuming it was carried via humans. They didn’t notice it receded in colder months. People just died within 3–4 days. It was carried by blood-sucking fleas breeding on stowaway rats. A rat carried a flea which infected a human, opening death’s door.

Fast-forward 344 years. Today’s Swine Flu is a lethal gene cocktail carried by humans. It’s killed 31 Australians but is drug-treatable. Every year 3,000 Australians die from flu but expect many more now. A vaccine is imminent but isn’t a complete cure and hospitals aren’t ready for this medical tsunami. Interestingly, the young are most vulnerable. Perhaps their immune system hasn’t been subject to previous pandemics. We’re all now subject to science, so see a doctor if you have fever over three days or experience shortness of breath.

We depend on each other.