The Big Picture

As I am writing this blog - more than 3.2 million cases of COVID-19 has been reported the world over, more than 228 thousand deaths, and a little more than 1 million recovered from the COVID-19. In India the new case reported in 24hrs curve is yet to flatten.

Governments all over the world are enforcing public lockdowns to contain the spread of SARS CoV-2. In many countries people are already under the lockdown for more than a month.

The future looks bad atleast for the next 2-3 months, some financial pundits are even predicting that it will take more than 6 months for the economy to come to normal. Those tiny little invisible monsters named SARS CoV-2 are infiltrating all over the world. All the global population is experiencing the brunt of this disease. I myself am locked in my house for more than a month because of the lockdown.

But hey haven't you experience such disruptions before in your life?

I mean not just like pandemic but there are always some seemingly insurmountable problems coming our way. Think about it for a while. If I tell you mine, I have been lost in jungle without food or water or direction with friends a couple of times; I have had very high fever (103F) in the night, I didn't woke up my parents as I thought they will cause more trouble, I was feeling dizzy and trying the control the temperature by putting cold water bottle under my shirt, it looked like the night was never ending; during college suddenly I have to present a paper in an auditorium full of 300 people; joined a commando training workshop and came to know that each session was like hell, the couches there never hesitated beating or punishing us if we failed or not did the task/exercise as per instructions; the first time I met the girl I like; the first time I left my house for studies; my pet falling ill, coming home badly wounded; illness followed by death - of my beloved grandfather; death of my beloved pets; death of a good friend; break up from gf; financial losses in stock markets; cheated by trusted friend; financial scam; road accident; went after a business plan leaving everything behind and the investor at the last minute ditched me and started his own business with my plan leaving me high and dry; there are many such incidences where I felt like it's all over. I bet you must have gone through such experiences where it felt like it's over, I'm done, I quit etc.

But what do you think about it now?

What you will do about it if it happens again?

In my case I think these were the trivial things, though at that time such incidences seemed like great loss, I now know that they were great life lessons, they gave me confidence, gave me chance to do better, they helped me reach where I am today, they helped me meet people which I am with today, they made me what I am today. It taught me that everything has an end.

All these problems help us grow emotionally, hence the past problems looks trivial. We even forget many such blips in our life.

Coming back to COVID-19, as I said, this will also end. It is not like it will go on till everyone dies. Only 3-4% of the infected people (mostly who are already suffering with other illnesses) die, rest all recover from the disease. And guess what, the recovered people don't transmit the disease or develop the disease again because their immune system now knows the enemy and how to defeat it. Such recovered people will add to the herd immunity of the society and will slow the spread of the disease.

In some countries the total death rate is actually reduced because people are not dying in road accidents or riots or robberies etc. because of the lockdown. Many companies have developed ways for their employees to work from home (WFH) which would not have been done if there was no COVID-19. Companies are finding the WFH culture more cost effective, so they are going to keep it. It will also save a lot of fuel costs, pollution and office space. It is hard to get junk food, cigarettes, hard liquor etc. during lockdown so we like it or not but our body will like it.

 3-4 years in future we all will be busy with our lives and only occasionally we will recall the COVID-19, may be to tell the tales of our survival through the pandemic to our children or grandchildren.

But till now, make the best use of it, like use the free time to learn the things you always wanted, read, write, do whatever gives you happiness (without causing anyone trouble). Invest the money if the market is down in a diversified way in good companies. That will also add to your repertoire of good COVID-19 tales.

So the Big Picture doesn't sound that doom and gloom. It is just a temporary blip in the history of the mankind. I am an eternal optimist, so I see a lot of progress of the mankind in the future. As the years are passing, the rate of progress is increasing. Make good use of current opportunity at your hand.

Take care and have a nice day.

Sumit,

The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

How should I react to Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in samanyabuddhi way???

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

-Wikipedia

As I am writing this blog post, more than 6,63,000 people have been confirmed infected world wide, it of which, more than 1,42,000 are now totally recovered and there has been more than 30,000 deaths. We can say that this disease (COVID-19) has become a pandemic. In many countries it has reached stage 3. The stages of the spread of disease are-

Stage 1- Where the authorities know who came from the affected countries and those persons should be quarantined and kept under watch for signs of disease.

Stage 2- Where the people migrating from affected countries come in contact with local people, like family members, friends, relatives or various service people but still the authorities can track those who came in contact with the migrants from affected countries.

Stage 3- Now the local people who came in contact with the migrants from affected countries mingling with other local people. Here because of the large scale of interactions the authorities cannot track the spread of infection and hence everyone is a suspect of infection.

Now let's have some thought about the virus.

What is a virus?

Virus is not actually a living thing. It is just like a computer virus. It only works when conditions are favorable.

A virus on it's own don't shows any signs of life, it doesn't consume food, doesn't make any energy, there is no chemical reaction happening inside, there is no movement, no breathing, nothing.

A virus generally is just an RNA (Ribo Nucleic Acid) which contains the generic codes for reproduction, some enzymes which helps in starting the reproduction process, these two are packed in a protein and lipid envelop. This protein envelop has some special proteins which acts as key to enter the host cell.

If there is a pen drive, which contains a computer virus capable of infecting windows 10 through some weak points of windows 10, and we keep the pen drive in a closet, then nothing will happen until we plug the pen drive in a powered on PC with Windows 10 operating system. If the virus I is plugged to a Windows 10 pc which is powered on then only the virus will get activated and start infecting the PC, then if there is an antivirus installed which recognises the activity of the virus then there are 2 cases 1) the virus may have capacity to overpower the antivirus program, in this case the virus will cause harm, make copies of itself in all connected devises or 2) the antivirus successfully deletes the virus files and there will be the end of the virus.

If we plug the pen drive in some Apple device then there will be no activation of the virus at all.

Similarly natural virus has these particular key proteins in it's envelop which opens the door of the host cell. That is every living organism has different proteins supported by cholesterol in it's cell membranes which only allows the required molecules to enter into the cell. These key proteins in the virus envelop are very particular about the host cell, for example HIV can only infect human lymphocytes, not any other cell or not the lymphocytes of a dog.

Once the virus key proteins opens the lock of the host cell door, a passive entry of the enzymes and RNA in the the host cell is triggered. The enzyme and RNA then quickly starts synthesizing the proteins necessary for making the virus copieas by using the cell machinery. The cell now become a zombie, it doesn't now perform it's intended role but instead starts acting as a virus factory. When the cell becomes full of virus copies, a self destruct mechanism gets triggered, which destroys the host cell, releasing the viruses. The new viruses released, starts infecting more cells, each one of them produce many more viruses. Now the infected person can spread the infection through his body fluids like cough(mucus)/saliva/urine/feces/blood/genital fluids as per the infection. (Cough/saliva in the case of COVID-19, which gets sprayed when the infected person coughs or sneezes. This virus is heavy, so it doesn't float in the air, it falls down and remains on the surfaces in the vicinity of the infected, when a healthy person touches such surface, it picks up the virus and if the person touches it's nose/eyes/mouth with such dirty hands without washing then the virus reaches it's destination and starts infecting.)

Now the virus defence is done by our immune system by various ways like- killing such infected cells and stopping the reproduction of the virus or making antibodies which binds to the virus envelop which prevents the virus from entering any cells i.e. our cells now recognise it as a foreign body and don't allow it to enter the cell.

This particular Novel Corona Virus infects our respiratory tract lining cells which causes dry cough, fever etc.

Now there is some time gap between the entry of the virus in our system and experiencing the symptoms of the disease. This period is called the incubation period. That is the person is infected but doesn't show the symptoms of the disease. To understand this incubation period let's take an example of Terrorists vs Nation-

Suppose a handful of Terrorists enter a nation with an intention of creating a terrorist organization by recruiting the citizens of the same nation, brainwashing them, training them and then using them against the same nation. You can understand that this process will take time before it starts showing it's existence. At first no one will notice the terrorist, the terrorist will then try to recruit, brain wash, train the members; till then some good citizen will notice that something bad is going on, he will raise the alarm, but the security system of the nation will also be sceptical about the alarm so it will just inform a local patrol to check it out, and then when the local patrol will confirm the situation, a countermeasure will be taken, it may involve a limited attack if the situation is not severe, but if it's too late then emergency will be declared in the nation and all the resources of the nation will be used to defend the nation from the terrorist threat. All of the normal public of the nation will only suffer if emergency is declared otherwise it will be a local affair.

In the same way, if things go too out of hand then only our immune system declares an emergency, all the resources of our body are diverted towards our immune response, that is, all energy is diverted towards the immune cells, all other gets less energy, hence we feel weakness, all other processes are slowed down e.g. digestion, hence we feel nausea, nose starts running, more cough is produced to flush out the infection, temperature of the body is raised to help our immune system function more effectively. We call all these, symptoms.

What will happen next?

There are two possible conditions-

1) Positive case- The spread of the disease will soon be contained, the number of the people getting detected COVID-19 positive will start decreasing. And it will end soon.

COVID-19 vaccine trials get successful and we don't have to fear it anymore, all the life returns to normal in a month.

2) Negative case (Worst case)- The disease keeps on spreading rapidly, exponentially. Almost all the population on the Earth will get infected, but is it the end of the mankind? Is it where all ends?

Certainly not.

Law of natural selection / survival of the fittest :

We all have learnt the law of natural selection, the one who is fit to survive in an environment survives, others who can't- die. This is the nature's way of weeding out the weak ones.

There has been many such natural disasters in the past like, ice age, droughts, floods, tornadoes, meteor strike, many epidemics, pandemics etc. But still the life thrive. Because the survivers are stronger and they quickly take up the vacant places.

This period is the live demonstration of natural selection / survival of the fittest.

We are observing a history in the making. We will tell the tales of how we survived the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown period etc. to our children and grandchildren.

Not everyone who is infected by Novel Corona Virus dies, many have recovered totally and many will. The mortality rate is much less than 10% globally.

So what we should do?

Preventive measures prescribed by Government of India-

PREVENTION

But on top of that one should try to keep his or her immune system healthy by-

1) Eating healthy food- Eat home cooked natural food, prefer protein rich and low carb food, practice periodic fasting like eating only once in a day and only water otherwise for the rest of the day-once or twice a week (do check what suits you).

2) Exercise- Exercise 2-3 times a week(more is not needed), exercise is something which pushes you a little(not more, otherwise you would damage something more and never return to exercise) beyond your normal capacity. Exercise should include yoga, cardio and strength.

3) Rest- proper and enough rest is very very important for our immune system. Deep sleep is the best rest. Always take required amount of sleep, listen to your body to determine how much sleep you need, because there are no standards, every body has different needs. For example I need 9 hours of sleep every day, 2-3 hrs less sleep in a week leads to symptoms of infection. Whereas some of my friends need only 5-6 hrs of sleep every day. If you catch any infection and show any symptoms like cough, cold, fever etc. do sleep much more than normal till you get well. When we sleep, almost all of our energy is used to fight the infection and we recover soon. But if we keep working then our immune system gets less energy and you can imagine what will be the results.

This is samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com so how can we not think about wealth and happiness?

What should we do for our wealth in view of the COVID-19 ??

I am an eternal optimist, all global share market indices are down 20-40%. So I think it's a great opportunity to purchase great businesses at discounted prices. Creat a diversified portfolio of great businesses. You can directly buy individual stocks if you understand what you are doing, or can buy index ETF (Exchange Traded Funds), or if you don't understand that much, you can buy a diversified mutual fund of a reputed fund house or an index fund of a reputed fund house. Invest your money in a staggered manner so that if market guess up from here, you have something invested and if it falls further, you will have money to invest. Such opportunity comes only once or twice a decade so don't let it go.

What should we do for our happiness in view of the COVID-19 ?

Many are ordered to work from home (WFH) by their employers, so make the best of it, your travel time is saved, invest this time in the family. Spend quality time with your family. Spend time on your hobbies. Learn something online, cook, paint, sing, dance, do what you like and enjoy. Do remember-

The POWER is when,

You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

So have a nice day.

Sumit,

The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.