PETACH TIKVAH, Israel — One by one, countries are scrambling to sign billion dollar contracts to buy potential vaccines to Covid-19. At the moment, the development of an effective vaccine is highly questionable, at least according to WHO Secretary General António Guterres and White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who both stated that an effective vaccine is unlikely in the immediate future, if ever.
But even if a vaccine is developed, it will not end our troubles. In fact, it will only exacerbate them, and for a good reason.
We need to understand that the coronavirus is not a standalone event; it is the first in a series of crises that will eventually drive us out of our self-centered mindset and compel us to become considerate, and eventually caring toward each other and toward nature. The more we use every crisis to advance toward that state, the easier that crisis will be, and the easier will be the crises that will follow. Put differently, the more efforts we make to change voluntarily, the less efforts nature will make to force us to change.
At the moment, humanity and the rest of reality are on opposite trajectories. While everything around us is connected, we people think more and more only of ourselves. We are oblivious or indifferent to the harms we’re causing one another and to all of nature, and we want only to satisfy our most immediate whims.
But eight billion people cannot live like that; it’s unsustainable. And because nature does not work like that, and we are subject to nature’s dictates, as much as we may not like the idea, nature will force us to change course and align ourselves with it. Therefore, the sooner we reroute, the less pain nature will have to apply to us in order to impel us to do what it wants.
It turns out that there is an effective cure to Covid-19, but it has nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with our hearts. When we change our attitudes, change our hearts from alienation to integration, care, compassion, and mutual responsibility, we will discover that we have defeated the virus without even fighting it.
In fact, by doing so, we will not only protect ourselves against the coronavirus, but against all the future blows that nature plans to land on us to the extent that we refuse to align ourselves with its dictate: to become considerate, connected, and caring for our fellow people and all of creation.
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