The Coronavirus outbreak has given humanity a negative surprise. It dramatically changed the ways of the world and brought many pains to its people, but its people only. Yes, I dare to say only to humanity. I say this because the Coronavirus pandemic has given the environment a time to breathe. It has given our ecosystem time to stabilize and recuperate from human-caused degradation. COVID-19 has also made humanity realize that our invasion of the natural world is the cause of many of these “Zoonotic diseases,” just like HIV, Ebola, Zika, SARS, amongst others.
The Coronavirus global pandemic has forced the world to change its behavior in dramatic ways. In most of the world, humanity is forced into self-quarantine for apparent reasons. The world has shut down, and these are the following effects. Cities across the world have stopped, streets are empty. There is reduced to no transportation, flights have been canceled, and multiple factories have shut down. These mandated solutions are quite beneficial for our environment, and to us, even in these times of pain; it’s hard to see.
The positive effects of the shutdown in the world have been surprising. Sea turtles are laying more eggs than ever thanks to empty beaches. The canal in Venice has crystalline water. The levels of air pollution and warming gasses significantly dropped as countries moved into quarantines. Carbon monoxide coming from cars reduced by 50% in major cities. Not to go far from home, here in Bolivia, we can also see the positive effects in the Rocha River. This body of water used to be a highly contaminated river, but now you can see it has no trash, crystalline water, different types of birds, and even fish.
From what caused the beginning of the transmission of the pandemic to the positive effects of the world’s shut down, we as humans have many things to think about. Humans are putting too much pressure into our world. This shows that we need to take conscience and the little space we give nature to take back the place it does. We, as humans, need to understand our interdependence with the natural world and more of the problems we have including pandemics like this are our own creation.
