Corona - the new reality

Recently, around the year 1500, Columbus brought the flu and measles to America. Result: the Indian population halved. The first pandemic. I said 'recent', because 400 years (30 - 40 generations) is a very short period of time on the total evolutionary history of mankind.

Until 1900 the world was a globe of unexplored places, you could travel to areas where no one else had ever been outside the indigenous population.

When the baker in the village didn't wash his hands, then half the village got that virus. That's all. We didn't get outside our own turf. That has changed.

We travel, meet, shop, visit festivals, sit crammed together in trams, subways and on beaches, sometimes in such a way that even a pig on a transport would be horrified. In a busy week, 1.5 million globetrotting people fly away from Schiphol Airport alone. Every day, many millions of people fly from one place to another like mosquitoes; carrying all kinds of viruses, bacteria and parasites.

20 years ago there were an average of 9 people between you and the rest of the world. For example, my wife had dinner with Tony Blair. Blair knew the president of Thailand, who was in contact with his minister of culture, who in turn knew the chiefs of some indigenous tribes. Those chiefs knew the shamans, and they knew who lived deeper in the jungle. By 2020, we will only need an average of 5 people to be in contact with the whole world.

How do we reverse this? I don't know. To include health detectors on all borders in addition to passport control, drug dogs and firearms detection goes too far. The coronaviruses are not an incident. It's the new reality.

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Hermans Bessels is architect BNA at Bessels architekten & ingenieurs B.V.