COVID: When the Dust Settled

Having lived through the weirdness of Covid I kept thinking it was difficult to see the light clearly in the middle of a storm. However, I had hoped that when the dust settled there would be so many important lessons learned from this devastating outbreak. Some countries like Sweden avoided many of the compulsory restrictions imposed elsewhere, kept compulsory schools for younger pupils generally open and relied much more heavily on voluntary public-health recommendations. I wondered what was their experience in terms of excess deaths.

It is also clear that in 2021 wealthy countries had ordered billions more doses than they required for their own populations. Subsequently one wealthy country, the United States, ended up dumping more than 80 million doses. Although to be fair many of these wealthy countries were major donors of vaccines to other countries. 

It’s difficult to have a fair scoring card after all it was not a level playing field. Italy had a first-class health system in its North when the outbreak hit them, but it was one of the first to face the dire consequences of epidemic attacking the health system. No wonder they were quickly overrun with a shortage of ventilators and no available treatments. Others had time to observe their suffering learn from it and take preventative action that helped them cope better.

Perhaps one of the best scores was attained by New Zealand to emerge remarkably unscathed. It did help it was an island, not densely populated and had a leader who acted quickly to defend the population. But despite her evident success, she later became increasingly unpopular and was strongly criticised by sections of a population who perhaps did not know what they had been spared.

But even populations that should have known better had large numbers dying of Covid, not only stubbornly resistant to taking available vaccines but also to using masks or obeying basic isolation instructions. Even when my friend phoned her relatives in the US and learned of more deaths in their ranks all around them, their views remained unchanged. Perhaps the biggest lesson is how misinformation, always disturbing at the best of times, became deadly in the middle of the worst of times. How ignorance became a rock to cling to not a stepping stone to learning more.

You can see I have my own misconceptions and slant on the whole business but surely in six years someone intelligent with insight has gathered together all the experience and facts and made some progress and understanding what worked and what didn’t. So, this was my goal. Step back from my own particular view and consult others whose field of expertise is exactly this!

The Score Card

Probably the best single measure in comparing countries is generally age-adjusted excess mortality, rather than the officially recorded number of COVID deaths. This excess mortality successfully captures deaths missed by testing/reporting and some indirect effects of the pandemic. The age adjustment is required because it was the older population who were hit hardest and if you have a country with a huge population of older people then you would inevitably have higher numbers of deaths whatever your response. By using age-adjusted excess mortality you greatly reduce that variable when comparing countries, although many other differences between countries remain. WHO estimated about 14.9 million excess deaths worldwide in 2020–21, far above the officially recorded COVID death count.

But how did individual countries fare?

1. New Zealand was one of the clearest successes. Its elimination strategy—tight border controls, quarantine, testing, tracing and rapid lockdowns—kept COVID at bay until vaccines were available. Their vaccine uptake was high and it experienced exceptionally low cumulative excess mortality over the pandemic, with mortality actually below expected levels in 2020–21. Mind you islands generally coped better. There is an advantage in having a sea border to protect you. In fact, one international study found that islands fared about 3 times better in terms of age-standardised excess deaths than non-island countries.

2. Norway and Denmark also performed very well. Among the European countries these two had very low pandemic mortality. They reacted while hospitalisation numbers were still comparatively low. This is evidence that one of the strongest lessons to learn in a pandemic is that speed matters. Even a modest intervention at an early stage is much better than a severe intervention when hospitals are rapidly filling.

3. Sweden avoided many of the compulsory restrictions imposed elsewhere and initially suffered considerably higher mortality than neighbouring Norway and Finland, particularly in vulnerable elderly populations in care homes. However, in the longer term its overall excess mortality compared surprisingly favourably with many European countries. One interesting lesson from Sweden is that voluntary behavioural change can accomplish more than was thought.

4. Britain performed badly during the crucial first wave. It entered the pandemic with good scientific expertise but delayed important early interventions due to slow political decision-making and so transmission grew rapidly. It experienced high early mortality however, Britain did considerably better in vaccine development and deployment.

Early in the vaccination programme vaccines showed very high protection against symptomatic disease and also reduced infection and transmission, but this protection against infection became much less reliable as immunity waned and new variants appeared. Public-health messaging did not always make this changing distinction sufficiently clear. A useful message as the evidence evolved would have been:

“The vaccine may not prevent you catching COVID, but it greatly reduces your probability of becoming seriously ill or dying from it.”

That distinction might have preserved more public trust.

In particular, school closures carried enormous costs. Children had a relatively low risk of severe COVID and the long school disruption had detrimental educational and social consequences. Future pandemic policies may require a much higher threshold for closing schools. COVID mortality was extraordinarily concentrated among older and medically vulnerable people and responses should therefore be more carefully targeted according to risk.

In many other countries, those in nursing and residential homes were extraordinarily vulnerable to this pandemic. Protecting them should have been among the highest priorities. Lessons learned were the necessity of rapid testing of staff, good ventilation, adequate PPE, sick-pay arrangements preventing infected staff from working and the residents having early vaccination. More careful hospital-to-care-home discharge policies could have reduced the disease being channelled from hospital wards to the most vulnerable in society. Perversely, some countries concentrated enormous resources on restrictions affecting millions of comparatively low-risk people while the virus was allowed into institutions containing the people most likely to die.

Mind you many of these are easy in hindsight and perhaps much harder when you dealing with something of the unexpected scale of the Covid pandemic.

Another lesson learned was that SARS-CoV-2 is predominantly transmitted through respiratory particles, especially indoors. As a result, improved ventilation, filtration and air-quality monitoring should therefore become routine. Much less was achieved by washing surfaces. I had elderly relatives who spent hours using acholic wipes to clean each piece of grocery delivered by van from the supermarket.

The pandemic revealed that resilience really matters. Countries need spare hospital capacity, trained staff, surveillance systems, testing capability, vaccine manufacturing, strategic supplies and public-health organisations before a crisis begins.

And governments need something much less tangible: trust. People will put up with extraordinary restrictions for a limited period if authorities explain what they know, what they don't know, why a decision is being taken and what evidence would cause that decision to change. A recent academic paper concluded that Countries where people had greater trust in their government tended to have lower infection rates. Even more importantly, countries where people had greater trust in one another also tended to have lower infection rates. Lower government corruption was associated with better outcomes too. High-trust countries also tended to achieve higher vaccination rates once vaccines became widely available.

My asthmatic mother was hospitalised with Covid in her late eighties in Northern Ireland but thankfully survived. One of the genuine surprises of COVID-19 was that ordinary asthma did not substantially increase COVID mortality. In fact, some research suggests that asthmatic airways may have presented the virus with fewer convenient doorways into the cells and that some inhaled corticosteroids, used by asthma patients, may have reduced aspects of SARS-CoV-2 replication or the inflammatory response to infection. These remain possible explanations rather than established reasons for the unexpectedly low mortality risk. But there are conditions that really made catching Covid deadlier. Age is definitely the biggest contributor in risk of Covid death but diabetes and obesity also played major roles, as did a number of other underlying medical conditions.

Perhaps the Lancet summed it up best: the countries that did best weren't necessarily those imposing the most restrictions. They tended to be those that acted early, protected vulnerable people, maintained public trust, had competent health systems and adapted policy as the evidence changed.

That are probably lessons we should all remember.

Changing climate linked to changing partners

There is a recent article in the Scientific American entitled Breaking Up which caused me some concern.  It highlights worrisome unexpected changes that are arising as a result of climate change.  In order to set it in perspective, it helps to understand some background information first.  

In a world where separation and divorce are ever more common it is also interesting to note that marriage itself has experienced a drop in numbers per 1000 people worldwide – see graphic below.  Admittedly this data stops at 2018 and who knows how much a pandemic will have altered the stats, it is a case of watching this space.  However, there are already a few red flags as one leading British law firm, post-Covid, logged a 122% increase in enquiries on divorce from pre-Covid levels in just four months.

Certainly, it seems as if marriage numbers are dropping significantly across most countries.  How about divorce?  Well, the picture (see below) is a bit more varied with divorces per 1000 peaking in the US in 1980 and then falling whilst the other countries seem to show a steady increase in divorces.  Even in countries where divorce is illegal or against religious principles the rate of divorce may be lower but is usually increasing.   

 

Some studies have suggested that divorce levels actually fall during difficult economic conditions, simply because people cannot afford a divorce.  Others have pointed out that additional stress of any kind, can contribute to divorce hence the jump in divorces post-holiday periods when couples are having to spend more time together than normal.  But stress is difficult to ascertain even during a pandemic.  In the US suicide levels from 2000-2018 rose by 30% but actually fell slightly during the pandemic years. However, it is complicated as there is considerable research indicating that past epidemics such as the Spanish Flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome led to increased suicide rates.  Perhaps we are too close to this event to accurately predict outcomes.  Although many, during this pandemic, were stressed about increasing levels of isolation at home there were others who actually relished the absence of bullying and stress in the school or workplace.  It seems trying to understand stress levels via the divorce or suicide rate is too complicated in humans and a different cohort is required for clarity.  

If we examine the animal species only 5% of mammal species are monogamous.  Mammals that buck this trend and mate for life are Oldfield mice, dik-diks, titi monkeys, red and grey foxes, coyotes and grey wolves.  Prairie voles take it to a different level, they split nest building and child-rearing equally with their partner and not only mate for life but even after the death of their life partner 80% never have another.  Mind you how we learned about Praire voles and the strength of their bond with their partner is a depressing business. From this academic paper on Praire voles, it is strangely disturbing to read the following quote,

“Disruption of an established pair bond (between voles) leads to high levels of passive behavior (immobility) in the forced swim and tail suspension tests, a behavioral response reminiscent of grieving and bereavement in humans.”  

To understand this line, you need to know what the forced swim test and tail suspension tests involve. The swim test involves the scoring of active (swimming and climbing) or passive (immobility) behaviour when vole are forced to swim in a cylinder from which there is no escape. 

In the tail suspension test, the vole is hung from a tube by its tail for five minutes approximately 10 cm away from the ground. During this time the animal will try to escape and reach for the ground. 

The time it takes until it remains immobile is measured.  So, to sum up, in order to measure the stress and distress felt by separating a prairie vole from its life partner, it is forced to swim until it gives up and is hung by the tail until it ceases to struggle for release.  The time it takes to give up is a measure of the degree of bereavement at the loss of a life partner.  I don’t know why all this leaves me impressed by voles but totally disappointed by human beings in general.

Strangely 90% of bird species are monogamous and it is largely because their young (like human babies) are tiny, helpless, and immature and require a lot of parental care.  

Exceptionally strong bonds are found in lovebirds, Atlantic puffins, Bald eagles, albatrosses, geese, pigeons, black vultures, and scarlet macaws.  In fact, when the geese’s mate is injured it will guard them protectively until they recover or die.  

The article I referred to in the introduction in this year’s Scientific American was about the black-browed albatross who are socially monogamous as the pair alternate between lengthy foraging trips and egg-incubation duties.  If their breeding is not successful in the course of a year a female albatross will leave and find a different mate.  Such divorces have been noted for some time in the black-browed albatross which breeds on New Island on the Falkland Islands.  There is now 15 years of breeding data available and this has been examined in relation to sea temperatures and wind strength.  High winds allow for a greater distance of foraging while higher sea temperatures lower the nutrients available by reducing phytoplankton and subsequently the marine food web.  Higher sea temperatures have been recently observed to increase stress levels among partnerships and decrease breeding success.  As a result, in the warmer conditions more female albatrosses are leaving their life partners.  The paper proposes an explanation it calls the ‘partner-blaming hypothesis’ which is when the female conflates stress caused by environmental conditions with poor performance by a partner.  I suspect you know where I am going with this.  

If stress can do this to a monogamous albatross population perhaps we should be more concerned about what stress is doing to our community.  Whether stress comes as a result of climate change, a pandemic, or an economically challenging situation there are those out there who are already suffering.  They may be trying to keep afloat in horrific conditions or find themselves suspended in a state of distress. Do what you can for those you encounter. These days are not kind to Prairie voles, albatrosses, or people.  

 “Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path.”

 (Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 15)

 

  

 

Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated

This plane is far too full. Given the many precautions of the airport with careful separation of passengers by means of floor signs, sealed off areas, seats taped over to enforce distancing and even the queueing policy and masks mandatory there was a sense of these people know how to make this Covid-safe space. But even in the airport, despite all appearances, there were obvious flaws. Every single hand cleansing dispenser was empty. I knew because I’m paranoid enough to insist on using them all. That should’ve given me a heads up that all was not what it seemed. However, it was only when I entered the departure lounge that everything went really pear-shaped. My gate was absolutely packed with the queue snaking right around the entire hall. People were trying to keep a safe distance but the room was just not big enough. 

Then, we were jammed into the airport buses, on route to the plane, like sardines. Gone was any pretence of social distancing. We were packed far too tightly to permit even a bulky handbag to separate us. I consoled myself with the thought that the plane would be better. After all, the last time I flew on this route, in Covid times, there were only 16 people on the whole plane. I actually managed to stretch out and sleep across three vacant seats for the first time in years. Not this time! The plane rapidly filled to the brim. Obviously, being a Christmas flight, many were returning to Dublin for the festive period. I initially thought I would be the only fortunate person on the plane to have vacant seats on either side of me. Unfortunately, once the door of the plane closed there was a rapid reshuffling and a man took one of the empty seats in my row. I briefly contemplated the social etiquette of pointing out he should sit in the seat indicated by his ticket. However, since there was by now a massive reseating going on all over the plane I decided making a fuss was not in order. At least I didn’t have the chap two rows ahead beside me. He was wearing a mask so small it did not cover his mouth or nose, more of a chin strap. Who does he think he is fooling? Never mind I put my head back and try to relax. The stewards came around to take the food order and I politely declined. I have purchased an expensive FFP3 mask for this flight and I’m not risking removing it to either drink or eat. But darn it the people all around me are suddenly removing their masks so they can stuff their faces. Perhaps I should just relax after all I have had Covid already in May. 

On that last trip, I had flown to Ireland from Malta and brought a packed lunch to eat on the plane during the journey. After the flight, I got onto the bus for the long journey to Belfast. On that particular last leg of the journey, I did not feel at all well. In fact, by the time it arrived in Belfast, outside the Europa hotel, I barely managed to stagger off the bus before vomiting on the pavement. This startled me as I rarely ever vomit. As I’ve mentioned before, even in the face of food poisoning (a dodgy Chinese family meal) all vomited but my dad and I.  Then, when sailing with friends in rough weather, who were vomiting in unison either side of me, I managed to still enjoy my Mars bar. So, it was weird for me to feel so bad. I recovered once I had emptied my stomach. But within two weeks my mum and I both had Covid. Did I catch it on the plane? Somehow two weeks seems too long. Who knows, it could have been from a supermarket trip, getting petrol for the car, a neighbour who came too close to talk.   I’ll never know but Covid was horrid. I had a mild but nasty period but my poor 87-year-old mum was eventually hospitalised and had to have oxygen. Thankfully she fought her way back to health despite her age, damaged lungs and asthma and came home safely. Mind you, both of us are convinced our brains are just not the same. 

So, the reason I’m a bit paranoid on this plane is because I’m heading once again to be with my mum and I’m frankly terrified I’ll pick up the virus on route. The science is rather vague about how long antibodies and T cells remain in your system after you’ve been exposed to the virus and recovered. A few months was mentioned initially but then it seemed to depend on the severity of the original infection. Those who with the milder symptoms seem to lose their immunity faster. Then, there’s also vagueness about whether you yourself could be immune but still carry the virus to others. Just the possibility of that has generated a longing for 2m between me and all my neighbours on this flight. The younger generation seems much more relaxed about this disease. The young man behind me is chatting up a pretty girl in the seat beside him. They have that excited nervous first conversation, not exactly flirty, but each wanting to put their best foot forward. I’m wishing they would talk less as they’re too close to me. 

There are only two elderly people on this flight and I can tell they are panicking. Both wear a visor and a mask to protect themselves, a smart move I should have thought of. When the old man had entered the plane he had started a heated argument with a young man with a crewcut seated in 1A. The elderly man was sure this upstart was sitting in his seat and argued loudly while hitting his boarding pass with a red pointed finger. The air steward intervened as the young man searched for his boarding pass on his phone. It took time for the truth to emerge as the elderly man behind his mask and visor couldn’t hear the steward very well. It turned out his boarding ticket was in row three not row one and he and his grey-haired wife were eventually persuaded to move on down the plane to their real seats. In the middle of the confusion, his wife took a severe cramp in her calf and had to stop and rub it while groaning in pain. I have real sympathy with this getting older. Along with more pain, it makes mistakes more likely. There really should be compassion for the elderly. Remembering to wear masks is tricky once you get past a certain age. You can easily forget. 

In Malta, masks are mandatory everywhere outdoors and I have managed to get a block from home before remembering to pull a mask from my bag. Why is it so tricky? It’s because it’s foreign. The younger generation can adapt to change but older people have their life long habits engraved in brains of cement.  When you periodically lose your train of thought, can’t find that word and miss place inanimate objects with depressing regularity then obeying brand new regulations is really tough. There is a video of a pensioner online, entering a supermarket and mistaking a drink dispenser for an alcoholic hand spray and pouring the brightly coloured sugar drink over both palms and then rubbing in the sticky stuff earnestly. One’s heart leaps in real sympathy. When they hand out fines for not wearing a mask I think old age should be a valid excuse! 

Travelling had already become harder, even before Covid hit and was becoming very tiring. The distance covered by travellers in the airport has become longer, time standing in queues in steep stairways adds to the torture. The steps on a Ryanair aircraft are rickety and narrow with steps that are smaller than normal-sized feet. You end up coming down the steps on your heels with most of your foot projecting out mid-air. The whole structure moves like a rickety ladder and there’s no room to carry a suitcase by your side. Instead, you have to hold it in front of you pulling you forward dangerously over your toes. The fact that these ladders fold into the plane has to be convenient for the airlines but it’s a real liability for the elderly/pregnant/parent with small children. 

Another couple in front of me is also courting across the aisle. I suspect young people are desperate to socialise. Planes are replacing nightclubs, pubs and other social venues. We older ones avoid such unnecessary exposure to germs.  The young are excited to have these hours to get to know someone new at last. I cannot blame them. After all, they are young and feel invincible. Their immune systems are humming along nicely. Fighting off infections like crack troops. Ours are a withered bunch who have been whittled away by chronic conditions. Our systems often already need medication to keep our troops in line and in order.  These elderly troops seem less vigilant and effective.  I can remember getting deep cuts in my knees, when younger, and they healed so quickly. Healed and left no scars. Now marks remain for years and can even grow to form deep creases. Opportunistic growths appear in unlikely places and these old bodies view these invaders as bedfellows that just have to be endured. Decisions are sometimes made to rip such opportunistic growths off a shoulder or back but need to be weighed with the scar that will be left. Deciding to go for the scar or just ignore this new tenant have to be thought through.  In fact, with time you are a bit embarrassed by your battlefield body.  Once a nurse was worried by a huge bleeding sore on my forearm when I had decided this particular growth had outgrown my tolerance for it.  On my next visit to a health clinic, a different nurse was horrified by the size of an unsightly growth on my wrist.  As I made my way home I was trying to work out which had caused more distress in medical staff.  To rip off or leave alone, difficult to decide?

The other change that age brings is that you are more sensitive to stress.  You’d think with experience you’d be able to weather difficulties better.  But the truth is with age you long for peace and quiet and toxic atmospheres corrode your wellbeing.  Unexpected stress freaks you out.  As do last-minute changes or having to rush because you are late.  Responsibilities weigh more heavily.  You sweat over grandchildren.  Worry about their safety, fear you will fail them through inattention or carelessness.  Knowing how tricky inanimate objects have become, like jar lids that won't open, you are freaked out by these active strong-willed characters.  Their minds are like quicksilver and you feel like a heavy-footed cart horse.  These bones don’t move so fast anymore and these old brains don’t process thoughts so well.  There are benefits. Strangely emotions grow stronger with age.  A beautiful landscape can move us to tears.  As can a child’s smile or a sweet memory of an old friend.

Sleep changes. When you are young you can do without sleep all night. Function pretty well all the next day before collapsing the next night. When you are old, sleep becomes something you keep track off like a bank balance. Every morning you will enquire of everyone you live with if they slept well. It is a subject of interest to you as sleeping has become a hit or miss affair. No more total collapse into a blissful full night’s sleep. Instead, bladder trips pepper the night and often sleep does not follow these outings. Then the night shift of bedroom roof inspection begins.  Tired of the horrible thoughts that bubble up in a sleep-deprived mind I generally get up and have breakfast at 3 am. With a full belly sometimes sleep comes as an unexpected desert. With such varied experiences at night no wonder the elderly have daily conversations about sleep. And that doesn’t even cover the dreams. In old age, you can find yourself back in stress-inducing situations that years ago you might have faced. But now, at this stage in life, the stress is hyper experienced and unbearable.  You wake up traumatised by an experience you manage to wade through with difficulty in your prime but is now played in your dream as an awful sequel. When an older person asks you with genuine concern ‘Did you sleep well?” Know in what context they ask.  They know what a bad night feels like, the emotions that rip open wounded hearts. So, out of love, they want to be reassured that your sleep was sound and blissful. It pleases them to know someone is getting a good night’s sleep.

My romantic neighbours behind me are on their second meal of this flight. They consume vast quantities of drink that we older travellers would never challenge our bladders with. These young people after hours of flight look remarkably fresh. It reminds me of two friends of mine who went into the local maternity ward at the same time and gave birth on the same day. Amused by the synchronicity of this event, photos were taken of the two friends with their new babies on the ward. The young mother in her 20’s looked like a model in her nightgown with a freshly flushed complexion glowing with happiness. My 43-year-old older friend held her baby like an anchor that was too heavy to hold and looked like she had been through 20 rounds of a vicious heavyweight boxing match.  Even her hair seemed freaked out. The contrast between the two mothers in the photograph had us all roaring in laughter and sympathy. As I look around this plane I can see a similar phenomenon.  The young look exactly as they did when they entered this plane. We oldies look like we’ve been dragged through bushes backwards for several nights. Eyelids are closing independently of their owners and mouths seem to be pulled by gravity into grimaces that speak of back pain that has reached intolerable proportions. Old bones shift uncomfortably and long to be flat on orthopaedic mattresses. Cramps come and go in unlikely places and vague indigestion has begun to brew. Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated.  The noisy happy flirtatious chat of excited young people has become like dentist drills in our heads. We admire their energy and commitment but long for our own oblivion in a deep sleep. Our bank balances are running extremely low and being polite to others takes incredible effort. Excited chitchat from youngsters is like fingernails on the blackboard. 

But we must endure.  That’s what age teaches you. Patience with yourself and others, the flaws, the worries and the pains. It’s a hard-won quality and it makes you wish for all onboard this plane a safe journey and a good night sleep at the end of it. Because isn’t that what we all long for at the end of these lives of ours.

Winter is Coming

My grandfather rarely spoke about the War. I believe it was because what he’d seen and lived through was so awful words could not describe it, nor hearts sustain it. 

Wars are often thought of as inevitable. A permanent affliction of humanity like the seasons. That famous soldier and President U.S Grant urged preparation for war as he felt;

“War never changes. War is like winter and winter is coming.”

Ulysses S Grant

But other voices speak of war as crime;

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

Ernest Hemingway, 1946

At times the sheer amount of death that war entails makes a mockery of either side being a winner.  Henri Barbusse described such an encounter;

“Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide.”

We commemorate the dead and the heroes that return but somehow the wounded, the injured and the vile process of dying and its horror is rarely captured adequately, but Captain Edwin Vaughan came close when he wrote;

“The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell-holes.”  

War is about killing and any method that achieves that end, whatever the cost is too often deemed okay.

“I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”

 Nurse Vera Brittain, 1933

Conflict can occur when two argue and disagree but when language fails its purpose then we have war as Margaret Atwood so succinctly put it;

“War is what happens when language fails.”

We have had two World wars and they are a part of our history taught in schools.  But it is impossible to educate any of us about future wars, their nature and their outcome. The horror is too great, the loss of life too terrible to convey to young minds but one of the greatest minds considered it deeply and made this heart stopping prediction;

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Albert Einstein

Of course, people fight wars for reasons and Tolkien gave a powerful reasons;

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

However even war that begins with reasoned justification  and thoughtful serious reflection and reluctance  can conclude in the mindless celebration of mass murder; 

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

Voltaire

“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”

Albert Dietrich, Army Gi, Pacifist Co: The World War II Letters of Frank Dietrich and Albert Dietrich

I like the way Dietrich makes this clear distinction between being prepared to die but not to kill.  These letters written between these identical twins one a soldier and the other a pacifist have been compiled into a wonderful book about war and life.

The specific reasons for a war of course will have very little effect on the suffering of those who die as a consequence as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out;

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

Margaret Atwood suggested in her earlier quote that war is a failure of language whereas John Steinbeck felt it was a more fundamental failing than that;

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”

John Steinbeck

And our choice to go to war has consequences not just on those who fight or are killed, because that very choice shapes the life we all lead in endless ways.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Perhaps the most horrific thing about war is that it recalibrates all that we normally value as humans.

“Consider human ignorance and inconsistency. A man who kills another man is punished by execution, but a military genius who kills one hundred thousand of his fellow creatures is immortalized as a hero. One man steals a small sum of money and is imprisoned as a thief. Another pillages a whole country and is honoured as a patriot and conqueror. A single falsehood brings reproach and censure, but the wiles of politicians and diplomats excite the admiration and praise of a nation. Consider the ignorance and inconsistency of mankind. How darkened and savage are the instincts of humanity!”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 287

I am not sure why thoughts of war have come to me at this time of a pandemic sweeping the world.  But doesn’t war seem particularly pointless when humanity is trying to marshal its defences against a virus that is 0.000125 mm across and not even a living thing?  Fundamentally does this not remind us that we are one family and if we cannot work together for the best of humanity then we are less than the most inferior of us all.