The architect of utter chaos at SUST

Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh

Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Sylhet is a research-based   institution of higher education in Bangladesh. It was established in 1986 with the lofty goals of partaking research in physical sciences and engineering, and was the first university to adopt the American credit system. True to its name, during the first couple of decades, SUST secured the 610th rank in the world list of research-oriented universities.

However, the state of affairs now at the university is far from happy and the academic atmosphere is on the decline. A grim situation of physical violence exists in the campus, too. The miscreants from the ruling political party, masquerading as students, have infiltrated the student community and violence by them, often sanctioned by the administration, had broken out within the campus. Altogether academic sanctity and human decency are unknown elements at the moment.

Most of the present turmoil, if not the whole of it, can be placed at the doors of the top administrators, particularly of the Vice Chancellor of the university Mr. Farid Uddin Ahmed, who had shown total ineptitude for governance and disregard for decency.

The utter chaos currently prevailing in SUST stems from the outdated system of selection of a Vice Chancellor (VC). Whereas Dhaka University (DU), Jahangirnagar University and many other universities in the country rely on their respective Senate to select the best candidate from a panel of candidates for the post of VC, SUST is conspicuous by the absence of Senate and relies solely on the Chancellor (the president of the country), who rubber stamps the individual hand-picked by the ruling party. Consequently, a political candidate, rather than an academically suitable one, is chosen for the post. Accordingly, the incumbent VC of SUST was selected in August 2017 for a four-year term and then given a second term last year, although he is grossly unpopular among students and teachers alike.

According to many articles published in this newspaper and elsewhere, Mr. Ahmed does not have the requisite qualifications required to be a full professor or the Vice Chancellor of a university. Appointment or elevation to the rank of a full professor in almost all the major universities in the world requires distinguished academic achievement―outstanding credentials in teaching, research and scholarly publications recognized by scholars within and outside the academic community.

While nothing to show for himself, not even a doctoral degree, earned or bestowed, Mr. Ahmed made his way to the top of the academic pole via the back door, using the greasy pole of academic shenanigan. In an American university, he can at best be hired as an adjunct faculty, also known as “freeway fliers” because they drive from one campus to another campus in order to patch together a mediocre salary teaching one or two courses per semester, usually without any benefit and job security.

A Vice Chancellor, on the other hand, must be an established executive with demonstrable leadership expertise in higher education, a deep knowledge of and ability in academic matters to promote the mission of the university and a clear sense of the diverse challenges of a public university with an outstanding undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. Moreover, the VC should provide moral stewardship, possess uncompromising integrity and unstinted wisdom, with a record of and administrative experience of working in today’s complex, multi-ethnic and global environment. Mr. Ahmed lacks all the above-mentioned qualities and attributes and is, therefore, deemed unsuitable to hold the office of the VC.

The chaos that enveloped SUST should surprise no one. Mr. Ahmed essentially brought this on himself with his clumsy and self-defeating attempts to ignore the legitimate demands of the resident students of Begum Sirajunnesa Chowdhury Hall. They were unhappy, and even angry, because of the way he was running the university and how callous he still is in dealing with their legitimate grievances.

Shamefully, to wield his power and consolidate his reign, he used state terrorism by unleashing the cops who maimed and injured the students with lathi (bamboo stick) charge, rubber bullets and sound grenades. Alumni who donated money to the students for their sustenance were arrested, physicians who were involved in providing emergency medical assistance to those on hunger strike until death were ordered to stop their humanitarian work and mobile bank accounts of protesting students were shut down. He also used numerous ancillary individuals including his 34 cohorts (VCs)―the academic Harlequins at other public universities, and at times crudely manipulated his enablers, to launch a vicious campaign of disparaging the students with their inflammatory and clownish theatrics.

Mr. Ahmed’s lack of respect for those who disagree with him, as well as misogynistic remark about the marriage ineligibility of female students of Jahangirnagar University because they stay out late at night are reprehensible. It can very well be said that a person who lacks civility and self-respect cannot show respect to others.

The renowned science fiction writer and former popular professor of SUST, Dr. Zafar Iqbal aptly described this deformed personality as a “demon.” One could also call him the Tin Man of The Wizard of Oz because he does not have a heart. And there is no wizard behind the curtain to give him one. 

Mr. Ahmed’s second term as the VC may now be disintegrating, tumbling toward higher entropy, a term used in physics to describe disorder. There are dangers ahead if he does not resign or removed. The university may descend into utter chaos and be paralyzed by the student movement, rendering him head of a dysfunctional institution. Or there is the risk of an erratic, embattled, paranoid VC who feels that he may be going down the gutters anyway and thus will use all available weapons at his disposal to stay in office.

Finally, we feel that educators and education administrators must move away from the culture of sycophancy and presumptuous self-importance. Otherwise, it would only help to perpetuate a culture of corruption, servility and political subservience, which is endemic in Bangladesh.

Dr Quamrul Haider, Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York and Dr Anisur Rahman, a Nuclear Safety Specialist, Manchester, U.K.

Can humans settle on Mars once Earth becomes uninhabitable?

Mars surface with Earth’s junk

 In 1920, American poet Robert Frost mused: “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” Frost held “with those who favour fire.” His poetic view unsurprisingly coincides with mainstream scientific consensus about the real prospect of our own annihilation—arising from the incomprehensible scale of problems baked into our future by human-induced climate change. That is why probably a year before his death in 2018, the celebrated British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking issued a grave warning that we must leave the Earth and colonise “other planets in the next century in order to guarantee survival from a variety of threats.”

Now that the much-hyped COP26 has ended “not with a bang, but with a whimper,” it is time to seriously consider Hawking’s suggestion—colonise another planet before the Earth ends in fire.

From The War of the Worlds by HG Wells to The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov, science fiction writers have long been fascinated by the idea of settling on another planet, especially Mars. Science fiction aside, it is indeed the dream of a growing number of scientists and geo-engineers to make Mars inhabitable with some terraforming, a term used to describe transforming another planet into an Earth-like planet.

Why Mars and not the Moon? The Moon, our nearest neighbour in the sky, is impoverished in resources. Furthermore, a day on the Moon is 29.5 Earth days long. Also, the Moon being far less massive than Earth has a weaker surface gravity—about 16 percent that of Earth. For example, a fully suited Apollo astronaut (equipment included) who weighed about 500 pounds on Earth, weighed only about 80 pounds on the Moon.

Why not other planets? The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, are too hot for humans to survive. The Jovian planets, Jupiter outward to Neptune, are gaseous, which means they do not have solid ground to put our feet on.

What makes Mars, which is on the outer boundary of our solar system’s habitable zone, a good candidate is its proximity from Earth’s closest approach every 15 to 17 years is about 54.6 million kilometres, its day-night cycle is almost the same as ours, with abundant sunshine, and it has a 687-day year with Earth-like four seasons that last twice as long. Although gravity on Mars is 40 percent that of Earth’s, it is sufficiently strong to retain an atmosphere and is believed by many to be adequate for the human body to adapt to. Additionally, hydrologic and volcanic processes on Mars are likely to have consolidated various elements into mineral ores that are of interest to an industrial society.

But current conditions on Mars—freezing cold and bereft of such amenities as a breathable atmosphere—are inhospitable for human beings. Nonetheless, in the ancient past, the Red Planet was remarkably habitable, featuring lakes, rivers and an ocean. Things, however, changed dramatically after the planet lost its magnetic field about four billion years ago when its molten iron core froze up. Without a magnetic field, charged particles in the solar wind stripped away Mars’ once-thick atmosphere, eventually reducing it to a thin sliver that could no longer retain sufficient heat. As a result, the planet underwent a reverse greenhouse effect.

Today, the greenhouse effect on Mars is extremely inefficient. Its atmosphere, about 100 times thinner than Earth’s, is not thick enough to act as a thermal blanket to keep the planet pleasantly warm. Average surface temperature on Mars is a frigid negative 55 degrees Celsius and varies between negative 125 degrees near the poles during winter to positive 20 degrees at the equator during summer. In addition, the atmospheric pressure is less than one percent that of Earth’s. Since the atmosphere is excessively thin and cold, Mars cannot support liquid water on its surface, but this does not mean the planet is devoid of it.

Thus, before we colonise Mars, we have to fix the Martian atmosphere and make it hospitable to human life. In particular, we have to raise the planet’s temperature to a comfortable level and make the atmosphere thicker. Several possible ways of accomplishing this task have been proposed. Among the many techniques that are on the drawing board, scientists are seriously considering adding temperature-raising gases in its atmosphere, to melting parts of the Martian polar ice caps using giant orbiting mirrors to reflect sunlight, to making the Martian surface non-reflective.

Introduction of fluorine-based compounds that produce a greenhouse effect thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide is being considered as a long-term climate stabiliser. There is also the possibility of in-situ resource utilisation, thanks to NASA’s Curiosity Rover discovering subterranean methane, another potent greenhouse gas.

Another element that could play an important role in trapping heat on Mars is aerogel, one of the lightest materials known to humans. Composed of 99 percent air, it is also a good insulator, which is why it is being used in the Rover mission. Using modelling and experiments that mimicked the Martian surface, researchers from the Harvard University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and University of Edinburgh demonstrated that a thin layer of this material increased average temperatures of mid-latitudes on Mars to Earth-like temperatures. Aerogel could also be used to build domes for habitation or self-contained biospheres on the surface of Mars.

If large mirrors can successfully be put into orbit, they will reflect sunlight onto Martian poles, so that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are believed to be trapped inside the ice will melt and initiate the greenhouse effect. The orbital mirror plan has the advantage of continually introducing extra heat into the Martian climate long after the poles have sublimated.

The idea of coating the surface of Mars with dark materials in order to increase the amount of sunlight it absorbs was first proposed by author and scientist Carl Sagan. The materials could be dust from the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos—two of the darkest objects in the Solar System—or extremophile lichens and plants that are dark in colour.

As noted above, Mars does not have a magnetic field strong enough to shield it from the harmful electrically charged particles in solar wind. Scientists at NASA think that it is possible to deflect the solar wind by positioning powerful magnets at one of the five points in space between Mars and the Sun, known as Lagrange Points, where the gravitational forces and the orbital motion of the magnets would interact to create a stable location. Simulations showed that a shield of this sort would protect Mars from the solar wind.

A new study suggests that Mars could be provided with a magnetic field by creating an artificial ring of charged particles around the planet. This could be done by ionising matter on the surface of its moon, Phobos, which orbits the planet quite closely and makes a trip around it every eight hours. The ionised (electrically charged) particles, when accelerated, would generate an electric current that would give rise to a magnetic field strong enough to protect a terraformed Mars.

How soon can Mars be terraformed? Realistically speaking, once technologies are perfected, it would probably take several centuries for the Martian climate to resemble anything even remotely Earth-like. Will our planet remain habitable for such a long time? That is a moot question.

Finally, it is ironic that many of the approaches to terraform Mars represent the global environmental catastrophe currently causing such concern here on Earth. In view of this, opponents consider terraforming Mars to be the ultimate in “cosmic vandalism.” Proponents on the other hand see terraforming as the creation of a new Garden of Eden.

Quamrul Haider is a Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York.

Amid global warming – why are we in a deep freeze?

Obverse effects of global warming

During winter, more often than not, a large part of northern United States is pummelled by an Arctic blast, sometimes severe, sometimes less so, that lasts for a week or two. But this winter’s blast plunged not only Midwest and Northeast into a deep freeze with bone-chilling temperatures as low as negative 45 degrees Celsius, but it also tested the mettle of millions of people living in the Deep South, particularly Texas, a state that seldom experience sub-zero temperature.

An onslaught of freak wintery weather—a cocktail of heavy snow, sleet and chilling ice storm—with sub-zero temperatures knocked millions of Texans off the power grid and plunged them into deep freeze, the lowest being negative 12 degrees in Houston. Frozen and burst water pipes in homes and businesses were widespread. Unlike northern states, Texas is not equipped to handle ice, sleet or snow. As a consequence, hundreds of vehicles, including dozens of 18-wheeler, were involved in horrific and sometimes fatal pileups on untreated icy roads.

The recent extreme weather is not limited to the United States. That is because when the winter is extreme in one part of the hemisphere, it is often extreme all across the hemisphere. Thus, the “beast” from the Arctic hit Europe too. In January, Spain experienced a deadly snow storm with dangerously low temperatures. Even a tropical country like Bangladesh, especially the northern region, could not escape the wrath of the cold wave.

Snow fell hard in Greece and Turkey, where it is far less normal. Snow also fell in Jerusalem and parts of Jordan and Syria, while snow-covered camels in Saudi Arabia made for a rare sight. We also had more than our fair share of snow. In the lower Hudson Valley of New York, where I live, Mother Nature already dumped around 36 inches of snow since the last week of January, with more in the forecast. Most of the snow—24 inches—fell in a single storm event from January 31 through February 2.

Climate change deniers have often used cold winter weather to advance their argument that global warming is a Chinese hoax. In one infamous example, when an Arctic freeze descended on the northeast, including New York City, in December 2017, former US President Donald Trump tweeted, “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming to protect against” harsh winters. Only an ignoramus person like him could make such a stupid statement!

It may be counterintuitive, but paradoxically, among the many factors, anthropogenic climate change is mainly responsible for the short-lived bursts of extreme winter weather that we have been witnessing in recent years. Indeed, there is strong scientific evidence that rapid heating of the Arctic caused by global warming is pushing frigid air from the North Pole further down south due to distortion of the polar vortex.

Under normal conditions, cold air is concentrated in a huge low-pressure gyre around the North Pole in an area called the polar vortex—about 15 to 50 kilometres above the Earth’s surface in the layer of the atmosphere known as the stratosphere. When the vortex is strong, the jet stream—a narrow band of strong, fast-flowing wind in the upper atmosphere that generally blows from west to east all across the globe—acts as a barrier between the spinning cold air in the north and the warmer air to the south. As a result, cold air remains trapped in the Arctic, making winters in the northern mid-latitudes milder.

How does global warming distort the polar vortex? It is well-known that the rise in global temperature is not evenly spread around the world. Because of the loss of Arctic ice which otherwise would have reflected a substantial amount of solar radiation back into outer space, average temperature in and around the North Pole is increasing about twice as fast as in the mid-latitudes. This is known as Arctic Amplification. Several studies show that the amplification is particularly strong in winter. Consequently, a rapidly warming Arctic weakens the jet stream, which in turn weakens the polar vortex to the extent that it becomes distorted, thereby spilling its cold air southward.

According to meteorologists, in a span of two weeks from December to January, Arctic Amplification gave rise to a phenomenon called Sudden Stratospheric Warming, in which temperatures in the atmosphere 15 to 30 kilometres above the Arctic jumped by nearly 55 degrees, from negative 80 to negative 25 degrees. This accelerated warming weakened the jet stream considerably and subsequently distorted the vortex so severely that it got knocked off the pole, resulting in a sudden plunge in temperature south of the Arctic Circle all the way to the US-Mexico border. Hence, the once-in-a-lifetime cold winter in Texas and other southern states.

Continued rise in global temperature will not necessarily mean an end to bitter cold waves during winter any sooner. One group of researchers believe that Arctic blasts will still occur, but their intensity will depend on how much greenhouse gases we vent into the atmosphere. It is very probable that they will become rarer over time, but the ones we are experiencing now will more likely persist and last longer. Another group says that warming in the Arctic will increase the chances of frigid polar air spilling further south, leading to more periods of extreme cold days in the future, much colder than the ones we are experiencing now.

Nevertheless, the recent weather pattern clearly demonstrates that both extreme heat and extreme cold can happen side by side. Besides, two to four weeks of cold snaps do not make a winter. They are short-term weather events, while climate is about long-term trends. Arctic blasts are, therefore, not enough to compensate for the overall warming of the climate across the planet. In fact, last year was one of the hottest years on record, with the average temperature surpassing a number of all-time highs. And it occurred without the warming influence of El Niño.

Finally, we are in a deep freeze amid global warming because our “senseless and suicidal” romance with fossil fuels has fundamentally changed the global weather systems for worse.

Quamrul Haider is a Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York.

Five years since Paris Accord: Are we any better?

Global warming and rise in sea level

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Accord hammered out by more than 190 countries at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21). The core objective of the accord is to save humanity from the existential threat posed by climate change. To that end, the participating nations agreed to keep the increase in the average global temperature to within 2 degrees Celsius while endeavouring to limit it to 1.5 degrees by the year 2100. Besides pledging to temper the rise in temperature, they agreed to restructure the global economy, phase out fossil fuels over the coming decades, switch to renewable sources of energy, embrace clean technology, and most importantly, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

The Accord gives every country the ability to set its own goals to confront the climate crisis, in line with their specific situation. Moreover, instead of demanding expeditious and deep cuts in fossil fuel usage, it allows parties to peak greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible” followed by a gradual decrease in order to reach the zero emissions goal. It is patently evident that such a vague timetable fits the interests of the major polluters, including the United States, China and India. Nevertheless, beginning this year, each nation is required to reassess its own reduction plans once every five years. However, there is no consequence or penalty if a country fails to reassess or falls short of the pledged reductions.

The Accord also requires nations to address “loss and damage” caused by climate impacts. Since the wealthy, industrialised nations are largely responsible for the backlog of climate changing emissions lingering in the atmosphere, they should compensate poorer nations for unavoidable loss and damage. But even after COP25 held in Madrid last year (2019), wealthy nations are playing Jekyll and Hyde roles—promising to cover losses while dragging their feet on providing new finance.

We are now a full five years into the Paris Accord which, according to the former US President Barack Obama, is supposed to make the “world safer and more secure, more prosperous and more free.” Are we really on course to transform our planet into one as envisioned by Obama? Are we winning the race against climate change? Did we succeed in slowing down the damage resulting from climate change? By all accounts, the Accord did not make an iota of difference in decelerating the progression of our planet, and subsequently our civilisation, toward climatic meltdown. On the contrary, climate change and its deleterious effects are accelerating, with climate-related catastrophes piling up, year after year.

Our planet is now almost at the breaking point. The environmental changes sweeping across the world are occurring at a much quicker pace than five years ago. As the Earth warms, we are witnessing more cataclysmic wildfires turning forests into carbon dioxide emitters, not to mention calamitous floods inundating nearly half of landmasses in countries like Bangladesh, Maldives, Thailand and so forth. Persistent droughts, fierce storms and an increase in extreme weather phenomena—derecho, microburst, bombogenesis, Frankenstorm and many more—are on the rise. The fingerprints of climate change since 2015 can also be seen in the exacerbation of internal and international migration patterns of climate refugees.

Scorching heat waves, of all places, in the Arctic region, are now more frequent and long-lasting. It is quite likely that 2020 will be among the hottest years ever, even with the cooling effect of this year’s La Niña. Seas are warming and rising faster, putting more coastal cities at risk of going under acidic water. Warmer waters are wreaking havoc on marine organisms forcing them to migrate away from their familiar habitats. Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, thus disrupting availability of freshwater.

Climate-induced mayhem is taking a heavy toll on the Arctic region. The amount of Arctic sea ice whose whiteness normally acts as a natural reflector of heat back out of the atmosphere is dwindling so rapidly that the region may soon become ice-free. Loss of ice is also changing the Arctic terrain—making it greener and prettier, but at the expense of releasing copious amounts of carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the frozen soil, which in turn is making global warming even worse. Additionally, scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean, worrisomely called the “sleeping giant of the carbon cycle,” are escaping into the atmosphere. In fact, northern landscapes are undergoing massive change, with potential ramifications not just for the Arctic itself, but the world as a whole.

Permafrost in cold climate countries is thawing at breakneck speed, releasing, just like Arctic ice, large amounts of long-stored carbon dioxide and methane. In addition, viruses and bacteria that had been buried under the permafrost for thousands of years are being released into the environment, posing health risks to humans and other forms of life. Also, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, a vital carbon sink that retards the momentum of global warming, has surged to its highest level since 2008.

As for peaking of emissions, there is a cavernous gap between the sharp cuts in emissions required to meet the goals of the Paris Accord and current projections. In a recent report, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised agency of the United Nations, states, “There is no sign of slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement.” Rather, emissions from just about every country are still on the rise, thereby making it difficult to close the gap so as to achieve zero emissions by 2050.

The report further notes that even the coronavirus-related drop in emissions failed to make much of a dent in the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Consequently, WMO warns that the world risks becoming an “uninhabitable hell” for millions unless we drastically cut emissions—by at least 7.2 percent every 10 years if we want to keep the rise in temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius. Otherwise, we will soon be north of 3 degrees Celsius.

The warning from WMO is corroborated by a study published last month in the British journal Scientific Reports, in which the authors assert that we have already passed the “point of no return for global warming.” The only way we can stop the warming, the authors say, is by extracting “enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

The Earth’s average temperature has already risen by roughly one degree since the advent of modern record keeping in 1880. The devastation caused by one degree rise clearly indicates that an additional 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius rise before the end of this century will lock in the changes to the Earth’s climate system that will be beyond our adaptive capacity.

Five years ago, the then UN chief lauded the Paris Accord as a landmark agreement, a potent message from world leaders who had finally decided to take on climate change in earnest. Five years later, in a complete volte-face, the present UN chief, in a speech at Columbia University in New York, issued a searing indictment of our utter disregard for the pledges made in Paris. He said, “The state of the planet is broken. Humanity is waging a suicidal war on nature, facing new heights of global heating, new lows of ecological degradation….”

So much for the Paris Accord! No wonder environmentalists believe that the Accord is meaningless, and with good reason. Indeed, the toothless, nonbinding, non-enforceable accord is an oversold empty promise—a gentleman’s handshake applauding the imposition of a global climate regime on humankind that is harming the planet in the name of saving it.

Finally, world leaders should realise that fixing the climate is not about making pretty promises at grandiose conferences held in glamorous cities. And if we rely on grandstanding and farcical Accords that give us false hopes, we will lose the race to keep our planet cool and habitable.

Quamrul Haider is a Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York.

An Open Letter to Humans from COVID-19

The COVID-19, a strain of coronavirus, sends an open letter to Humans on the occasion of Christmas 2020:

• 

COVID-19

Dear Humans,

I am totally astounded and flabbergasted by the audacity you have displayed so far to my strength and ferocity. I may be small, a very small strain of coronavirus, but I am not weak. About a year and half ago, I evolved in your planet in the most populous nation on Earth. I thought I would have a fun time jumping from one to the other of 1200 million of your species. But Chinese government reacted very promptly, to my utter disgust, forcing me to stay within the confines of only 10 million or so Chinese. I will never forget or forgive the Chinese.

You know that I am a virus and hence I cannot live on my own. I need a body, preferably, a sick human body – a body with underlying problems like respiratory illness, diabetes, weak hearts having transplanted or bypassed, kidney problem, dementia and a lot of other problems, as my host. I do not want to go to anybody who is not prepared to be my host. After all, who does not like an easy prey, an easy meal? I hate going to a strong healthy body and fight it out with his or her body protection system.

You call your body protection or defence system an immune system. There is nothing immune from my attack. I am smaller than the smallest of a bacterium. You cannot normally see me or detect me unless you take me to an electron microscope. Even then, you have to be very careful detecting and photographing me. You take the shot from a wrong angle and you miss the point.

As I said, I need a host. I am not even alive on my own; unless I find a live cell in a live body like yours as my host within few hours, I would die. Once I get a host, I seek out the weak organ or tissue where I will have an easy task. First, I go to an organ of your body as an innocent bystander, observe how strong your organ is and how efficiently it is functioning. If the organ I am in is very efficient, then I tend to slip away to another organ. After all, I don’t want to sacrifice my life fighting a losing battle with a strong organ, whereas I could have a very comfortable life in another organ where I can flourish, multiply and even take over the whole organ!

When I multiply in an organ or capture the whole organ, I do not want to rest on my laurel. I want to go from your body to another body and keep capturing bodies. I use your cells as my hosts, your body as my survival machine. Before I make you inert (you know what I mean), I want to send some of us to some other human beings. I make you sneeze, make you cough, touch mucous membrane with your hands and pass it on to another person. I need your helping hand, literally. In fact, the more the merrier.

I hear that you have invented a vaccine against me, you want to kill me. It is then going to be an all-out war with me. I have lots of tricks up my sleeve – actually, up my spike to be precise. You think you can catch me by my spike, sort of catch a bull by the horn? No way. I will change my morphology such that as soon as you plan to bolt on to my structure, I will metamorphose to something else. Actually, I do not like the word metamorphose, as if I am doing a literary piece of work, I call it mutate. I mutate, I make your body cells mutate until those cells fail to function.

Mutation is the word I like most. As soon as you make something to catch me, you would find me that I have changed, I have mutated. It’s a cat and mouse game. And then you start the whole process all over again, back to square one. It goes on and on.

In all of this battle of wits, you forgot that I and my cousin called bacterium were the seed corns from which you were made. From the single cell bacteria to multicell bacteria and then to complex bacteria with RNA, DNA and mitochondria, that is how you came into being. Don’t forget all that of your past.

During the long evolutionary period of nearly four billion years, my cousin bacterium had done tremendous amount of work for you. You, all types of animals from antelopes to zebras, plants, fungi and algae were all made from innocent bacteria. My role was to terminate any unworthy species. Your fellow man, a very clever guy called Charles Darwin, very succinctly said, “struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.” I make that struggle as hard as possible and so don’t underestimate me.

May I remind you that during the last 450 million years when conditions on Earth were getting progressively favourable to you, as many as five times, 70 to 75% of all species of all living animals and plants had been wiped out. In addition, about 250 million years ago, nearly 99% of all life forms on Earth were obliterated. It was nearly going to start from a blank slate again. About 65 million years ago, dinosaurs were wiped out completely and that created conditions for life forms for you to evolve.

Life on Earth is a perpetual struggle. I quote again, Charles Darwin’s dictum, “struggle for existence and survival of the fittest” and this struggle and survival come from evolutionary process. If you, the human beings, think that you are clever enough and smart enough to override the evolutionary process, then you better think again.

One last point I would raise is that do not, not even in your dream, think that you are going to live on this Earth for ever. Since the dawn of life (any life) about 400 million years ago, 99% of all life forms have gone extinct. You came to Earth evolving from chimpanzee about 4 million years ago, less than 1.8 million years ago as Homo erectus or only about 200,000 years ago as Homo sapiens.  A species on Earth lives, on the average, 4 million years and so your time is very much nearer the end. You had been destroying the fabric of Earth, massacring the environment, causing extinction to many species. Probably you had been creating conditions for your own demise. SO BE WARNED!

On behalf of COVID-19   

–           Dr A Rahman is an author and a columnist.