Ignorance and Superstition - The Crisis Reminds Us That Human Nature Is Universal

7/4/2020.  This morning as I was listening to the BBC World Service 'Global News' Podcast, I heard an article about residents of Abidjan, the commercial centre of Côte d'Ivoire, destroying a new coronavirus testing centre.  With their bare hands.  Literally smashing the place to the ground.  This is a testing centre - not a hospital or treatment facility.

My instinctive reaction was a mix of sadness and something else.  But before I had time to recognise the something else for what it was, I was processing an article that I was simultaneously reading (I feel very contemporary to both read and listen to the news at the same time, although it's about the only form of multi-tasking I can handle).

The article I was reading was about how more than twenty 5G cell-tower masts had been torched and vandalised in the UK, because of a belief by some that there is a link between roll-out of 5G technology and the spread of coronavirus.

The pandemic crisis presents us with more irrefutable evidence that certain human characteristics are universal.  Not all of them good.