Daniel B. Botkin is a scientist who studies life from a planetary perspective, a biologist who has helped solve major environmental issues, and a writer about nature. Well-known for his scientific contributions in ecology and environment, he has also worked as a professional journalist and has degrees in physics, biology, and literature. Daniel B. Botkin writes an in depth article on why there are so many theories about the corona virus.
As a many decades environmental scientist, I have long tried to understand how nature works and where and how people could fit into to it—- for us to be part of it, not just outside it. Several times in recent years, I have written short essays pointing out that there are now more than seven billion people on Earth and then saying what a wonderful opportunity therefore our species must be for many other species—-as food, including species that might multiply just by eating on us and killing us. This is where we are with the corona virus, as the world has been with SARS, Ebola, and a widespread pig virus. Recently I am not alone, of course, today in pointing this out.
Not knowing in detail why this virus suddenly attacked us, putting so many people out of work and many large corporations declaring bankruptcy —so many threats to us and our civilization, our ways to make a living, to get food, and more, we see many explanations. These include: the claim that one nation created it as a weapon against enemy nations; very wealthy people have decided to take over the world for themselves and get rid of most poor and people of other cultures and beliefs.
Friends and colleagues ask me how this has come about, including if our God, deciding we have become evil, has decided to get rid of most or all of us.
This is not a new idea. In an ancient British folk song which became an American folk song, the lyrics say:
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
you’re gonna reap just what you sow.
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
Ain’t gonna be water, be fire next time.
As a folk singer in my off time from being an environmental scientist, this is one of my favorites and I have sung it around the world from Scotland to Spain’s Majorca.
Throughout human civilization’s history, before the development of modern science, when unexpected and not understood terrible things happened in our environment and to us, people have always turned to stories and folk songs to explain why this was happening.
We see this today where America blames China and China blames America for purposely creating the virus as a weapon against each other: where many average Joes and Jills just barely making a living in one of the richest civilization ever to exist won’t let them make enough money to buy food, get a descent place to live, educate our children, and be present and bury our dead with great feeling.
Before modern science, one way people sought an answer was to go to the then considered experts of the time, the alchemists. One famous story is in 16th century London a group of many alchemists met there and came out and told the leaders of the city that on a certain day in the next year they forecast that the Thames River would flood so high as to flood London way above the highest point in the city. As a result many people would die and London would be destroyed. They gave an exact date and time for this event.
London’s leaders believed this forecast to be true, as did most citizens, rich and poor. The chief of London’s religion built an artificial hill higher than the alchemists’ forecast that the Thames would reach. Wealthy people paid the priest handsomely to be able to dock their boats high on this hill and thereby survive the terrible flood. Thousands of poor walked away from the city so they would not be drowned.
Then the day came and the Thames River, not having read this forecast, rose and fell its normal amount. The people of London were so furious with this false forecast that many urged the powers that be to hang the alchemists. When this was threatened, the alchemists went into a room to have a private meeting. When they came out, they said that they apologized but realized their calculations were mistaken by just one very small number, and the flood was actually going to happen several centuries in the future. (It never did.)
Fortunately, we live in a highly scientific age. Many scientists try to help us understand that much about the corona virus is unknown, that the gathering of data about people who have gotten the disease, how many survived, and how many died, is very difficult to obtain and far from accurate. Thus, we are in the midst of a time when many excellent scientists are trying to do their best with incomplete and inadequate data to understand the disease, find preventions and cures. They tell us they cannot yet be as accurately as they want to be and our civilizations need to be.
Physicist John Droz exemplified this attempt by writing a three-part list of what has to be done by scientists. He then wrote a cover letter to President Trump and invited about 70 of the worlds leading scientists, including me, to sign it. I did; that letter he said was hand delivered to the President. In an exclusive article found in the Daily Caller that letter is discussed in detail as to why scientists and economists are urging President Trump to bring on a statistician to avoid getting duped by a bad health model.
But our ancient human traditions continue. Many of us seek an old explanation, some based on ancient myths and folktales, some just imagined. Other less moral people see this as an opportunity to talk fearful people out of their money by making claims that are not defensible.
So be careful in what you read and hear. The days of the descendants of those alchemists and believers in them have not yet passed. In great fear, many people return to the oldest, pre-scientific ways of creating an explanation.
Like so many friends and acquaintances, and so many people in the world, I am very disturbed and frightened by this virus. I have many friends and people in business whom I like and trust and wish things would go well for them. But instead of seeking a claimed answer to why we are being subjected to the corona virus, instead, when I feel bad, I take out my guitar, side down comfortably, and sing that old song.
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
Sowin’ on the mountain, reaping in the valley,
you’re gonna reap just what you sow.
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
God gave Noah that rainbow sign
Ain’t gonna be water, be fire next time.
Meanwhile, helping where I can with my own environmental science knowledge to try to find the science of this virus and ways to help people avoid it.
Copyright Daniel B. Botkin 2020
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