A fragile spring

We so often hear about how fragile the earth’s ecosystems are that we tend to forget just how fragile humans are…

Until something like Coronavirus comes along.

It’s a bug that on the surface looks a lot like the seasonal flu. And we like to dismiss that as annoying but pretty much harmless. Yet that annoying flu bug kills 300,000 to 600,000 people every year.

So, far Covid-19 has only killed about 15,000 people worldwide.

But it’s categorized with the much more deadly SARS virus that killed 15 percent of its victims. That virus didn’t last long precisely because it killed its victims too well. And that may well be part of what makes epidemiologists so nervous about this new virus.

Image by Arie Farnam

It has caused a lot of people to horde supplies and hole up in their houses with vicious glares for anyone who gets close. Despite the fact that for most of us COVID-19 isn’t a major health threat, it has forced us to look too closely for comfort at how fragile we humans really are.

A Swedish study found that heart attack rates jump during the first three weekdays after spring Daylight Savings Time, which forces us to get up an hour earlier to continue the same schedule. Traffic accidents also increase during the same period.

That’s all it takes to tip the balance for fragile humans. An hour’s difference in getting up and it causes deaths. How then are we surprised that some fish die when their water changes by a degree or two or the acidity level rises just a tad. We are really no different.

That’s what makes something like climate change so scary. A couple of degrees doesn’t sound so bad on paper, but just like with this relatively mild virus or Daylight Savings Time, we are fragile. In modern industrialized society we like to forget it. We like to pretend that everyone has an inalienable right to live to a ripe old age without losing family members and loved ones. We get used to thinking that’s just “the way things are supposed to be.”

That’s why something like Coronavirus sends us into a panic or a shopping frenzy. We are desperate to keep that safe, entitled feeling. And yet, the truth is that we are fragile. This modern, convenient, relatively safe society may actually make us more fragile, while concealing it from us.

Spring has always been the time of this fragility. As beautiful as March and early April look in natural places, in northern latitudes this time was known as the time of the greatest threat of death in pre-industrial times. This was the period when humans were most fragile—weakened by poor diet, crowded conditions and a constant stream of viral and fungal infections throughout the winter.

In early spring, food was not abundant yet, supplies were at their lowest and weakened humans, often the very old and the very young, died in greater numbers at this time of year. It is no wonder that eggs are our symbol of spring rebirth and hope.

It isn’t just that an egg holds the potential of new life. Even more viscerally. Eggs were the first abundant fresh food after winter. Domesticated birds begin laying eggs in greater numbers in early spring before even dandelion greens are available to nibble. These early eggs, little packets of life force prepared specifically to give a new life a jump start, literally saved the lives of many fragile humans over the centuries.

If the people could keep their domesticated birds alive and refrain from eating them through the lean times, the first fresh eggs would save them. Dried egg yolk is still used in emergency food deliveries during famines in war-torn parts of the world because it is so nearly the perfect balance of nutrients to save a starving person.

Eggs are an incredible symbol of the survival of hard times and the return of much easier and safer times.

In the time of Coronavirus, we reconnect to the fragility that was so close and personal to our ancestors at this time of year. And that oddly enough, grants us access to the visceral hope embodied by this time of year as well. As we watch the season of spring grow, we know that our immune systems will grow stronger as well. Coronavirus will not have nearly so much of an advantage when June and July come round.

We are stuck now, so many of us in quarantine or in countries under twenty-four-hour lockdown that looking out at the budding beauty of spring may feel ironic or out of place. It is worth remembering that this dichotomy has always been with us—the beauty, the blessings and the terrible fragility of spring.

The spring equinox has just passed in the northern hemisphere and my egg, chick and flower decorations are already out, while most Christians are still waiting for Easter. It is unlikely that Coronavirus will be on its way out by then either. But when you look at an egg decoration this year, you might think of it not just as a fragile little symbol of rebirth but also a symbol of survival, the food that brought so many of our ancestors through the hardest spring famines and epidemics.

We need that endurance and vitality now.