Viral
Lethargy
The
Challenges Facing Concerted Coronavirus Action
In the face
of the coronavirus threat, our governments have largely failed us. They have
been too slow to recognize the dangers and too slow to act. Once it's over, it
will be time to ask some uncomfortable questions.
By Ullrich
Fichtner
13.03.2020,
19:03 Uhr
The
"Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio, written during an outbreak of the
plague in the Middle Ages, is the product of a quarantine. The famous book,
almost 700 years old and several hundred pages long, presents a series of
scandalous stories told by 10 young nobles who had fled to the countryside from
the Black Death in Florence.
The stories
are of love and betrayal, perfidy and greed, sin and atonement. They are about
fundamental principles, about the kinds of things that we, as humans, are made
of. Such things become particularly visible in times of crisis. Such as now.
COVID-19,
the illness caused by the coronavirus, isn't the plague, that much we have
learned in the past months. But in the coming months, it will nevertheless
trigger significant changes in our lives, perhaps dramatic ones. Wealthy countries
in Europe will experience shortcomings in their health care systems, with
frightening scenes in hospitals, doctors' offices and emergency rooms to be
expected. It is entirely possible that doctors, just like on the battlefields
of yore, will be faced with decisions about who to treat and who not to treat;
who gets oxygen and who does not.
Hundreds of
thousands of people will come down with the virus in the coming months and a
quick look at the statistics thus far reveals that tens of thousands will
experience severe symptoms and thousands will die. The decisive question is
whether that will all happen gradually over a longer period of time or
extremely quickly. It is the difference between a crisis and a catastrophe.
To slow the
spread of the virus, the world will also have to slow -- and it will have to do
so extremely quickly.
Changing Our
Daily Routines
China has
long since taken extensive measures to seal off large population centers and
Italy has closed all non-essential shops and shut down entire regions. Air
traffic between Europe and the U.S. has essentially come to a halt. In Europe,
new measures are being announced by the hour, with conferences and concerts
being cancelled, schools and day care centers closing their doors. The illness
is forcing us all to change our daily routines.
On Thursday
evening, French President Emmanuel Macron ordered that all universities,
schools and kindergartens be closed starting Monday, a move that will directly
affect millions of families. Many German states are doing the same on Friday.
And yet, unfortunately, the catastrophic scenario remains the most likely
outcome because ultimately, we human beings gravitate toward hope and
frequently seek to avoid drastic action. In this respect, we can be our own
worst enemies.
Ever since
New Year's, when the first small news items began emerging from Wuhan, it was
essentially all about mathematics. And about the fact that people tend to
either take regulations seriously or ignore them all together, depending on
their mood.
That is
completely forgivable on an individual level, but governments and states can no
longer expect much understanding these days. Their failures in the face of the
threat posed by the coronavirus have already become indefensible.
Who, if not
our leaders, should have recognized the danger hidden from the very beginning
in the reports from China? Who, if not the responsible agencies and
institutions in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Iran, the U.S. and elsewhere
should have undertaken everything humanly possible to limit the consequences of
this pandemic to the degree possible? They failed to live up to their
responsibility.
Decisive
Action
The debate
as to whether football matches, festivals, trade fairs and conferences should
be cancelled -- in hindsight, these debates will appear ridiculous. Instead,
there will be justified accusations of negligent time-wasting. On top of that
will come the realization that on this occasion, the differences between Angela
Merkel and Donald Trump were quite a bit smaller than usual. Neither of them
took the danger seriously enough -- and that even though it had long since
become apparent that decisive action was necessary.
But
decisive action in a bureaucratic world is a rare thing, at least in the one
where we Germans live. The gridlock acted out on the big stage by the European
Union in Brussels is echoed in the German three-penny opera of federalism. But
this time, once it is all over, it will be time for a debate as to whether it
is really necessary, in the middle of a health crisis, for the German health
minister to first consult all 16 state health ministers before he makes an
important decision.
We will
have to discuss the question as to whether we really want to depend on a
Carnival committee to decide if their large events will be cancelled or not. We
will have to take a close look at why it was left up to German hockey league
officials to (responsibly) cancel their season early and up to German football
officials to (irresponsibly) only just now take measures to suspend matches. We
will have to discuss whether there might be better, more centralized strategies
for dealing with future crises.
If it is
true that crisis reveals a person's true nature, then the current one, at least
in its early stages, has revealed just how unable we are to show solidarity, at
all levels.
Ignorant
Recklessness
Reports
that face masks and sanitizer was being stolen out of hospitals are shocking.
Images of empty pasta shelves and shortages of toilet paper aren't much better.
The wholly insensitive and supercilious discussion about alleged mistakes made
by China in its battle against the virus has been shameful.
And now
that the virus has made its way from Wuhan to Germany, France, Italy, Austria
-- indeed everywhere -- now that there is a concrete threat to the lives of a
huge number of primarily elderly fellow humans, there are still people happily
coughing through their daily lives. People with fevers are sitting down in
waiting rooms as though they were completely alone in the world and had the
right to ignorant recklessness.
Unfortunately,
things aren't much better on the international level. Europe's nation states
are in the process of missing yet another chance to fill the European Union
with meaning and purpose. Instead of seeing the current situation as one where
a coordinated response could be useful, instead of understanding that this
virus isn't interested in national borders, European countries are focusing
almost entirely on national measures.
One can
even hear a few populist voices here and there, looking for scapegoats and
seeking to use the virus to boost xenophobia rather than looking for a global
solution for what is a global problem. Once again, it appears to be every
person for themselves. And nobody for the collective.
As such,
the search for reassurance and orientation produces precious little. Every
country, to be sure, has an expert like the Berlin virologist Christian
Drosten, who dryly recites what is coming. But the helplessness of those in
power is clear to all. Just like the EU, the United Nations is proving itself
unable to form an intelligible crisis response, even though it should be right
in the middle of the fight.
Approaching
a Diffuse Threat
Individuals
aren't good at correctly identifying risk, a truth that applies to viruses just
as it does to climate change. Everyone knows the rules for correct, sensible
behavior, but they are obeyed far too rarely. Or, on the contrary, they are
transformed into absolutes and ideologized. It is apparently quite challenging
to find the right approach to a diffuse threat that is difficult to assess.
Just like people drastically overestimate their chances of winning the lottery,
many are still underestimating the destructive power of the coronavirus. That
will have consequences. And it will change.
Many live
in areas where public life will go completely into hibernation. Many will have
to drastically change the ways they organized their day-to-day activities
because daycare centers are closing, offices are shutting their doors and city
centers are being declared no-go areas. The images from Italian cities may look
like scenes from a dystopian science fiction film, but that is what our lives
will be looking like for a time.
It has been
the reality in Wuhan for the last several months, a place that we long thought
was so far away. That was the first, decisive mistake. We must learn from it
and from all of the other mistakes we have made -- for the future.
Nobody yet
knows how this story will end or when it will end. Boccaccio's
"Decameron" closes with the return of the 10 young men and women to
Florence. They told their stories over a period of 10 days. This time around,
most of us will have more time than that.
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