Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all it’s “karma” or “Divine justice” on you here, but this whole Coronavirus pandemic is just what humans deserve for the sick, domineering, heartless ways they’ve treated animals over the centuries. Somehow they’ve convinced themselves (or worse yet, maybe they’ve never really thought about it) that they’re entitled to acts of extreme abuse on their fellow sentient beings. How else did they justify digging pits for mammoths or running herds of bison off cliffs only to be butchered en masse later? Oh yeah, they were hungry. Well, so were the animals they destroyed but they never stooped to making humans their slaves for flesh.

Even given humans’ long history of animal abuse, it’s hard to fathom them coming up with intrinsically evil, karma-defying traditions like factory farming and “wet” markets, both of which involve intensive warehousing of animals as though their rights or well-being were of no consequence. And like a bunch of spoiled, self-centered serial killers, their wants and desires are all that matters.

Over time, after the hairless, fleshy mutant hominid serial-killers-of-other-animals had driven the largest herbivores off the planet or at least to the most extreme rugged corners, they decided to give “animal husbandry” a go. Nowadays, they’ve gone so postal with that misadventure, they must have convinced themselves (or never really thought about it) that animals somehow enjoy being their servants and meat and secretion providers: that cows enjoy giving up their babies’ milk to demonic little primates who rush them through the mechanical milking process like the spear-wielding jabber-walkies who herded their ancestors over cliffs; that birds enjoy being crammed into cages so small they can’t even raise their wings so their precious eggs can be squirreled away by some self-important deity-wanna-bes; that pigs enjoy living their lives out as nothing more than bacon-on the hoof or that pangolins like being dragged from the wild and stuffed into tiny cages and displayed in a crowded, noisy, open-slaughter market next to fruit bats, secretive snakes, fish or untold other beings forced to serve their self-appointed masters.

As much as we might feel sorry for the people who are subjected to this pandemic like victims of some undeserved plague wrought by a punishing divinity, perhaps when this is all over they should stop and think seriously about changing their hedonistic, carnivoristic ways. And I’m sure it’s a challenge to keep one’s social distance for a species that’s let their population surge to almost EIGHT BILLION (and forces their “food animals” into tiny, over-crowded cells for life), but if humans want to continue their reign over this wonderfully vibrant planet, it’s time to back off a bit—and don’t go crying “Where’s the justice?” to anyone out there who might be keeping score.