"He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law..."
-Buck
Jack London- Call of the Wild
"I can't live in fear," "I've got to live my life" - these are not new sentiments; they've been around for the entirety of human existence. We've always wanted to stay warm by the fire rather than patrol the perimeter. We've always wanted to just live our lives without fear.
But this has never been possible. Jack London's "Law of Club and Fang" is immutable and timeless - you either pick up the club or you get torn down by the fang - be it animal or viral. Subway or steppe - there is no opting out; master the predator, or be mastered by it. Accepting predatory organisms - of any size - ripping through your community, killing and incapacitating your people, is inherently not only a cowardly act, but an unnatural one, because for the first time in human history, it cedes our status as the apex predator.
This is something we have not done willingly in millions of years. Much of it has been to the detriment of the planet and every other species, but one law has governed us throughout our history - no one messes with humans but humans.
We don't allow wolves to roam our cities to prey on the sick and weak. No generation before us has been content to "learn to live" with a predator as dangerous as the pathogens we now face. We either limit their existence to a few select, remote areas, put them in a zoo, or make them extinct. We are a savage and selfish species.
As the apex predators on planet Earth humans have never accepted sacrificing our own to the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Whenever anything tried, some folks grabbed a few pointed sticks or figured out how to flake flint and went out and showed them what’s what and who’s on top. We pay tribute to no beast- large or small.
Now, when people fashion shields and arm themselves, others, who are unwilling to fight, unwilling to protect themselves or others, proclaim that they must have some secret message. They say that if they carry a shield, their friends might laugh at them, that only a few will be taken, and probably only other people they feel don't matter, so why should they care? They want to “live their life,” so don’t bar the door against bears or carry a stout stick against wild dogs. They ignore the threat - until its teeth are buried in the throat of their own child.
Yes, there's a message in the tools we use - it's that we don't cede ground, no one comes for ours in the night, and no one picks off our elders or carries off our children. We use the club to fend off the fang, as we have done for over two million years, but now the fight is on a microscopic scale.
For generations, our ancestors have used superior intellect and cooperation to defeat any predator that comes after us or ours. A rifle above the door, a baseball bat beside it, an obsidian knife close at hand, a bottle of antibiotics- whatever the tool required to neutralize the threat, we have made it; humans do not surrender our own to anything.
To accept that any creature, any organism- any natural event, is our better and allowed to prey on us is unnatural. To surrender to chance - instead of arming ourselves and tilting the odds in our favor - is inhuman.
Cowering by the campfire because the monsters in the dark take only a few of our clan each night goes against millions of years of evolution. We are the monster in the dark - we are the nightmare of every other creature on the planet, from single-celled organisms to giant whales. For the last hundred years all creatures have been allowed to exist only at our sufferance and convenience. Humans are an undefeated agent of global extinction, barely tolerating life, let alone that which threatens our children.
Until today - when something, perhaps wandering from the forest, perhaps escaped from a zoo, preys on us in a way we have not seen in centuries. Pathogens, the last remaining predator we have not defeated. For all the harmless species we have eliminated, we turn tail and run from the one that threatens us more than any other.
Now, many ask, why don’t we go belly up, bend the knee, cower, and timidly accept such a tiny enemy as our better? Why not live our lives happily in the moment as Eloi, accepting the predations of the Morlocks when fighting them is so inconvenient and unfashionable? What if my shield doesn't fit my personal style? What if it hides my face? What if my friends make fun of my armor? Why protect ourselves when even acknowledging the Morlocks are eating us is seen as gauche? Of course they are, but we don't talk about it - it's so vulgar to acknowledge they even exist.
Why do some of us, refuse to allow pathogens, the last predator, to extract their price from us for another 100,000 years, taking days of pleasure and labor from us, disabling us, and killing millions? Why do we fight with technology, cooperation, and persistence like our ancestors did with every other threat to their tribes?
Because some, in every group, cower by the campfire and hope that in doing nothing, they will be safe, they pray for luck that someone else will be next and desperately chant soothing affirmations like "I have to live my life" as something seeks to end it.
Others follow the Law of Club and Fang; when they see the eyes in the darkness draw near, they pick up a fist-sized rock or whatever tool they can fashion and make their own luck - make sure they and theirs aren't next. They don't back down, not for any monster - large or small, with four legs or forty spikes.