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What Has Covid-19 Taught Us So Far (January 2022)

Another Covid-19 afflicted year begins and some us may be asking, “what have we learned so far from the misery of pandemic?” Sadly the experience has yielded few positives. For those with their eyes open, the human species has demonstrated some pretty poor behaviour. For those with their eyes on government the leadership has been equally ordinary if indeed well intentioned. Whether we could have expected better, given where we are in the human story, is hard to say but here’s what we know:

People Panic For More Toilet Paper.

It seems that when disaster strikes modern-day society people rush to buy toilet paper, something which has absolutely no value in survival. In Australia the ensuing stampede resulted in an immediate shortage. On the other side of the world, as soon as Dutch news reported this phenomenon, the same rush occurred and store-shelves of “bum-wipes” fell bare. Supermarket supply chains of pasta, pasta-sauces and bread also faltered. In some stores, people could be seen scrabbling on all fours to dig out the last morsels of packaged bread that had fallen behind empty bread racks. It seems, when a group of people does something, no matter how stupid, it’s hard for the large number of onlookers to resist doing the same thing. Clearly, the IQ of the ‘crowd’ is disturbingly limited.

Governments Are Slow to Respond

Even as people turn away from government dictate only to be wooed by social media rhetoric, they still expect their leaders to make perfect decisions. Just as small children assume their parents are infallible and wise so too does the naive electorate expect a sagacious and clairvoyant government. In reality of course the government is paralysed in many ways by its need to placate all the plaintiffs in its realm. In an emergency, governments can and have acted quickly but as Covid-19 becomes an endemic economic and social health problem, good judgment seems predictably erratic.

In Australia, quarantine came quickly in the early days and the economy was mostly saved but then as if sitting back on its laurels the government was late rolling-out preventative vaccines. Subsequently a panic wave of vaccine-deployment ensued amidst economic misery and more disruptive quarantines. Now as economic pressure increases, the quarantines are being abandoned prematurely and help for businesses withdrawn. In the meantime workers and consumers get sick and stay home resulting in downward economic pressure and supply chain shortages that the government refuses to compensate while the doors of commerce are deemed open.

In The Netherlands, as the number of daily infections rise to unprecedented levels, hospitals bitch and complain about worsening conditions, the government seems loathed to ask the electorate to give up its self-indulgences for just a few more weeks.

Unsurprisingly, social weariness grows in the Covid-19 story and governments lose more and more respect for actions that would curb or control the spread of disease. As the Omicron-variant, potentially as contagious as Measles, spreads like wild fire through Europe, Dutch authorities, perhaps fearing riots, abandon their lock-down so that consumers can return to the stores. Small businesses clamouring for a return to economic normalcy seem oblivious to the deep recessive effect that the uncontrolled spread of disease could cause.

Denial Prevails As People Tire of Hardship.

After two years, the Dutch population has tired of the disease and the lock-downs. People would prefer to believe the reassuring noises coming from social media which proclaim Covid-19 to be a bogus global conspiracy or that the vaccine is just dangerous spy-ware. It seems any ridiculous story that blinds people from a painful Covid-19 future is much better than the truth. The immense power of human denial in mass hysteria is demonstrated once again.

Despots and Mass-Formation

Would-be dictators rise to the occasion, taking advantage of people’s misery and ignorance in the face of quarantine to make themselves popular. With little capacity for science and common sense people hear the words they want to hear spewing from the mouths of snake-oil salesmen and sign up to the belief that the whole Covid-19 story is a government plot. The Anti-vaxxer is born. Bolstered by disappointing results with the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, which has undeniably saved more lives than it has hurt, the world turns en-masse against the medical experts. People complain about propaganda but forget that the uncontrolled, uncensored and unverifiable oratory of social media has the loudest voice of all.

The psychological theory of mass-formation is re-coined. As demonstrated by Hitler prior to the second world war, people will eagerly coalesce around any familiar face offering reassuring solutions and beliefs no matter how impractical or dangerous. People want life to be better, to return to normal, so they will follow the first idiot winning a few seconds of fame on TV who claims fairy tales can come true.

Consequently infections rise as do hospital admissions. No-one cares about the hospital staff at the front line of the disease. Everyone wants to return to their greedy pre-pandemic lives, desperate to dine again on haut-cuisine after exercising their consumerist addictions on the high-street.

Medical Staff Work Tirelessly

Hospitals are close to maximum capacity everywhere while medical staff are themselves waylaid by infection or overwork. Cancer and heart-disease sufferers have to forego life-giving surgery or treatment as hospital bed and staff allocations are lost to those afflicted with Covid-19. That a “black-alert”, or “code-black” might need to be called at some point is callously overlooked by the larger population of vaccinated and un-vaccinated alike who would prefer to focus only on their own petty beliefs, needs and compulsions.

People forget, in the face of all this misery that hospital staff continue to come to work, nobly risking their health and lives (and sometimes losing) to help: those frail few unlucky enough to catch the disease; those arrogant few who put their own importance before the needs of society; or those denialists who, suffering from SARS and gasping for breath, abuse staff while still refusing to admit they could possibly have Covid-19.

What Is the Truth?

Vaccines work . It’s hard to imagine all of the world’s medical staff are conspiring to tell lies. If the vaccines were completely ineffectual, or unusually dangerous we would expect to see whistle-blowers in the medical community coming forth in their hundreds to warn the world. Clearly, many governmental medical institutions world-wide have acted, as quickly and efficiently as public-services can, to abandon Astra-Zeneca in favour of the more effective Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Contrary to conspiratorial behaviour, they appear to be paying attention to anecdotal and scientific feedback.

In keeping with the honesty that generally prevails in the practice of medicine’s Hippocratic oath, even the Turkish medical association spoke out against an insufficiently (human) tested local vaccine (Turkovac) when pressured for an early release. It’s hard to imagine that only Turkish doctors would display that kind of integrity while the rest of the world’s doctors and nurses conspire to lie about the efficacy, safety and quality of vaccination.

People struggle to understand percentages . If just 0.01% of an average population get severely sick, hospitals overflow and a critical part of our modern infrastructure fails cataclysmically. That most individuals will never encounter these sufferers does not mean the problem isn’t real. Out of sight is clearly out of mind for most voters.

We live in a hedonistic society . Any sense of community seems to have become lost in today’s world. The individual has inevitably become a chump to consumerism and pleasure seeking. No amount of self-sacrifice for the betterment of the majority seems possible.

In desperate times people gravitate foolishly toward snake-oil salesmen . Like rats swarming around the pied-piper playing his hypnotic tune, miserable people will gather around the first familiar face claiming something magical (e.g. Covid-19 doesn’t exist or that the vaccine is the devils-work) against all scientific and logical common sense. The fact that such a vapid population has the right to vote is terrifying. It perhaps demonstrates how insurrection begins in society and why terrible leaders are often the end result of many revolutions.

Today’s zeitgeist is a dire and negative one . Covid-19 follows the economic hardship and inequality growing since before the turn of the century. Governments are clearly losing respect and subsequently control. The rise of populism is an inevitable result but the real fear is that very few leaders of various populist movements can ultimately be trusted either.