Nature’s remedy: an opportunity missed? Oliver Ockrim Introduction In 2019, the world faced huge challenges. Increasing concern was being expressed about climate change and biodiversity. Population growth was out of control and the ageing demographics was putting enormous strain on the economic resources of societies. No one knew the best ways to manage these geopolitics and the crises seemed insurmountable. Despite popular support for change, coordinated solutions from governments around the world seemed to be beyond reach. Then coronavirus came… This essay discusses the balance between the nature’s forces of natural selection, and the advances of human technology to overcome disease. This has led to a moral dilemma which has deep implications for the future of mankind and the planet. SECTION 1: The Human Factors 1.
Overpopulation and Population Density Overpopulation is, ‘The existence of more people than the available resources can support’ (1). Since the 19th century improvements in hygiene and medicine, and particularly the understanding of bacteriology and virology vectors that cause disease, has allowed a proliferation of the population across the world. The exponential surge of the world’s population is shown on Graph 1. The industrial revolution also resulted in mass migration of populations from rural settings to cities. In 2010 it was announced that over half the world’s population lived in urban areas (2). As a result, population density has rapidly increased as shown in Graph
2.
The theory of population imbalance, was discussed in Thomas Malthus’ book the ‘Malthusian Law of Population’ (3). A rising supply of labour inevitably results in lower wages. Growth in population and increased population density leads to poverty and ill health if associated with governmental under development and insufficient funds. Whilst small independent communities scattered in the rural settings limit the spread of infectious disease, the ghetto living of modern cities offers a perfect medium for uncontrolled disease spread. The ability of vectors to spread disease rapidly from community to community is facilitated by modern commuting, and internationally by modern travel. Without intervention, COVID would have likely struck down a much larger proportion of the global population. The death rate of unrestricted COVID transmission was estimated between 9-10 times that of the vaccinated population (4).
3. The Ageing Society In the developed world, industrialisation has generally been matched by wealth distribution and protections from biological poverty. Life expectancy has improved significantly as shown in Graph 3. However, population ageing comes with negative implications. The older a population, the less employed people there are in a country, leaving a much higher percentage of the population in need of financial support (pensions). As the ageing populations is predicted to grow more and more this century, governments will have to find ways to deal with the massive financial impact that this has on healthcare services, pensions and future labour supply. This is a huge issue for the world’s economies, most of the elderly population have little to no income meaning a very small amount of tax is paid by this increasing percentage of the population. 28
