Covid-19: We’re all just fumbling in the dark

Covid-19 has disrupted and destabilised the world. Pandemics have occurred before, but this is a new disease. We are still learning about it. We are also learning about what lockdown does to a society; not just its economy, but the psychology of ordinary people whose freedoms and liberties are suddenly and drastically reduced. Many cannot feed their families or pay for basic services. Others are burying their dead. Whether for vice or virtue, lockdown rules are increasingly being openly defied. The value of human life and livelihoods cannot be appraised in simple terms; there is no moral or ethical binary choice to make here.

Currently, we are caught in the surreal reality of limbo. The sudden and drastic changes that society rapidly underwent by going into near-total lockdown juxtaposes against the slow, day-to-day grind of how the pandemic unfolds. We know that the peak is inevitable, but we scale the exponential slopes towards the peak excruciatingly slowly. It unfolds one day at a time. And living in a society that has been brought to a standstill adds to the foreboding of the moment. We drift slowly downriver towards the heart of darkness. We have no choice but to enter into the inevitable. We can only manage our way through the catastrophe to come. We cannot stop it, at least not until we have a vaccine.

And adding to the tension of the moment, which builds slowly towards an inevitable confrontation with the inevitable reality of death; we are fed a slow drip-drip of information about our new existential threat. We know very little about it and are learning new things about it every day. This introduces a great deal of uncertainty into the decision-making equations we formulate; whether at a personal level, or whether at a city or country-level. Many “facts” about this virus have turned out not to be facts at all. The new revelations that children can indeed be severely affected by the virus and develop a condition similar to Kawasaki Syndrome – while currently only manifesting in small percentages of children who are infected – still presents cause for concern for both parents and education authorities alike.

Yet, we can learn from history if we recall similar moments in our history. This moment is reminiscent of the early discovery days of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, where so little was known about the new syndrome and how it spread. This led to speculation and stigmatisation that only served to propel and intensify the suffering of those who were infected. For those who remember; the initial discourse around AIDS presented it as a gay disease, a disease of sex workers, and a disease of the promiscuous. In the homophobic, conservative 1980s, this falsehood was perpetuated as though it would insulate the rest of society from it. Religious undertones also emerged in this discourse; those who contracted it were deserving of the punishment they received. Politicians added to the confusion.

Yet, all that this misinformation and confusion served to do was spread the condition wider and deeper into society, resulting in immense suffering, death and loss. It prevented the state and individuals from taking action to prevent it. The difficulty we are experiencing in getting people to wear masks is reminiscent of how difficult it was to convince people to use prophylactics such as condoms when HIV-AIDS began to spread. Expert opinions on masks were initially divided, and while there is now a consensus on the wisdom of wearing a mask; many ordinary people are unwilling to comply, still drawing on now outdated expert opinion to justify their unwillingness to protect others around them.

 

When a phenomenon is completely new, and there is no historical data, information and proven hypotheses to work from, we have no choice but to ride it out intelligently.