Problems within our world: the walk to the second year of pandemic.
The first wave hits us hard, and we thought we were ready when it recedes. Alas, things went to the least anticipated outcome.
The COVID-19, surely everyone by now have at least heard about it if not contracted by or losing someone due to the virus. It has brought the whole world into a disastrous state and creating instabilities in many aspects. We had been attacked in all aspects; creating physical, economical, and emotional distress in many (if not all) layers of society.
This pandemic that start to brought down the modern civilization to its knees has surely made a dent towards our daily life. It seems like it was not so long ago that we could still laugh and enjoying our life with each other, basking on the sun, and grab some drink with our friends. It was such an enjoyable moment until it crashes down from this invisible yet fatal threat.
Then come the time where this adversity forced us to let go which has became part of us, we have our own autonomy to decide the outcome. Therefore, which direction are we going as a human being in this trying time is being tested. Whether if it going to be a harmonious and orderly ones, or would it turns to be politically anarchistic ones, only time will tell.
Disorder due to confusion
There was a time when our thought were enveloped in fear, our head itches to kept our eyes nailed towards the statistical report of pandemic’s losses. Vaccines were a far cry of hope at that time, all of us were unsure whether if normal life would ever grace our life again, or will this new harrowing routine would stuck for long without any hope for its end. We used to be so obedient towards the government and abiding its measure; cleaning every hard surfaces and hands, washing our hands, stockpiling masks and toilet papers that eventually worsen the already horrific situation.
Then came the part where the nationwide lockdown has implemented in many countries where the pandemic hits their populace in order to prevent the collapse of medical infrastructures. that measure was taken to flatten the curve and curb the rate of infection of the virus (and thus preventing further mutation. That and many measures taken by many national health associations and WHO has helped to ease the situation to some degree.
It might not stop the pandemic, but it surely helped to drove the number down as everyone wait for the vaccine to be made and distributed. Just like the study on Italian tiered restrictions, it gave us some breathing room by decreasing the R(t) (virus’ reproduction number) to a safe degree and hopefully preventing reemergence of the virus. True, some country does implement relaxation of the measure after the number goes down, but it is not without consequence. Madrid has done that, and study found that higher viral inoculum that made higher pathogenicity that led to their second wave commenced in September 2020 right after they did reopen.
In this age of information, everything that anyone’s says could spread fast which also includes fake news. This platform can’t possibly moderate what everyone’s saying — which by then kills people, as what US President Biden said on Facebook COVID misinformation. Boredom then strikes the populace as there are no clear information about when the country going to be reopened, they long for the “freedom” that they had before and accusing the government of stealing their rights. Combine those two, everyone then lost their confidence against the government and start doing things that would hinder the government’s effort against the pandemic.
The government should have endured, but alas, many of them had eased the health and safety regulation way too soon. The combination of careless reopening of communities and lapses in the implementation of infection prevention regulation soon caused the number of coronavirus infection to be flattened again, this time vertically. Especially when it came to populist political figures that only cared about their electability, they’d just nod on the misled and misinformed masses.
Recovery and economic gains by sacrificing holistic development
We have arrived to a time where our society plunges into the trap of irking economic supply and demand, where some got starved and others throw away their excess. Humanity has seen this kind of disproportionate societal behavior, yet I thought the modernity has led us into a better being than before. Alas, humanity changes in a rather slow pace.
The market economy came to a great halt, stagnating and possibly coming to an economical recession based on the existing theory. As theorized by Arturo Guillén, he argued that the coronavirus pandemic is a new global crisis that triggered global economic crisis similar to the Great Depression of 1930s. Its complexity and depth that created by artificial support made by central bank to the fragile growth of capitalistic economy made V-shaped recovery seems unrealistic. With the economic power that mainly held by billionaires, the low income citizens might drown deeper and need longer time to recover which resulted in a K-shaped recovery.
The hegemony would be of course blame all this desperate situation to the pandemic, which warns the state department with their seemingly infinite supply of lobbyist. Their livelihood disrupted, the modern life as we know had stopped working due to their inhumane work conditions enacted on the early stage of pandemic that help its spread. I mean, let’s stop for a bit and think. Who in their right mind would choose to stay home in their fear with hunger and without pay when the other side of the balance is to keep working with minimum protection against the COVID measure? If both choice would led them to an agonizing death, (for them) it’d be far more respectable to die trying.
This is the result of that hesitation on “I’d lose 50 percent of productivity if I were to enact 50:50 capacity for health measure” on the early stage of pandemic. Many would object to the NHS’ (or similar kind of authorities in their respective nations) decision on enacting a “suffocating measure” of health regulation in the name of economic growth, parliament got bustling more than it used to be. Then they knew how powerful mother nature can be against human’s egoism. Now that we know that safety measures would be relatively effective against the spread of COVID-19, it is already too late to enact that, we had plunged into the abyss at this point. But you know what? It is better to be late than never.
But the measure had to be strictly implemented, since scientific data from various experiment had proven that timing is essential in order to prevent waves upon waves of future outbreaks. The economy will recover as long as there are people who will built it. Because if and when infection rate has leapt higher than health facility and health workers’ capacity, there won’t be any speck of civilization left to recover due to complete societal collapse. No government want this to happen, therefore one has to look further than short-term stock and asset gains in order for humanity to avoid this perilous situation.
Leadership crisis brought us something worse
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
- “Those Who Remain” by G. Michael Hopf.
When was the last time things had been tough in a global scale, when crisis chip away the whole aspect of human life as we know? This much was probably seen back then in world war 2, when world has fallen into turmoil, preceded by international economical crisis and great depression in the US. Things went too dark too fast, people’s anxiety got so thick in the air, and the heavy atmosphere became the catalyst for many prolonged conflicts as its aftermath.
That period was the time when human got hit by a great scarcity, modern technology and invention had taken over — yet mass panic and inconsistencies were suffocating us all. Things that is invented for killing and dividing us all are invented much faster than what is used for a life-changing application, even those used for daily necessities got weaponized. Humans are so good at knowing what they want yet so bad at knowing the priorities of things.
In this modern crisis that kickstarted on 2019, it then got spread into many countries that caught unaware on how fast this thing might develop. Thus it is so important for humans to know the door in which they could prevent it from getting worse, and those thing are held by the masses. Yet, alas, sometimes the majority of voice might not be the wisest solution to be heard. Like how Plato put it, we sometimes masking anarchy for freedom — and even socrates were killed by it, hemlock and all.
Without enough prior knowledge, we might be trapped in what is called as “Dunning-Kruger effect”. Spouting nonsense that we thought was right, while it is theoretically and empirically wrong. With the power amasses by the media and how they put their lenses into things, whoever they put in charge for speaking into the masses, argumentum ad populum will surely grows and fallacies take over all sane logics.
This is why we have anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and covid deniers even on the brink of total societal collapse. They were thought of their freedom of speech, yet they forgot to pertain about their responsibility that is inseparable form those practices of rights. At this time, a good leading figure that could talk senses into the masses while setting aside their political goals and ego, a strong men in a bad times, is nothing but necessary. Those who do not seek to divide but putting all the logic, fact-based science, and humanity before whatever shenanigans other political entities might has up their sleeve. The world needs that, someone or something to believe that order were created for their own good.
If it is — in the end — everyone for themselves, then why even bother creating an order for societies to follow? There are reasons why humanity regulates themselves so they won’t fall to the same pitfall over and over, insanity of repeating history infinitely. The crisis happened when there are no good leader — or even the total absence of any leader at all — that could handle the situation well, putting the service for the public before their own will.
With leaders that has big ego, media that tend to stray too far from neutrality, and megalomaniac multimillionaires and their fortune companies, it won’t be too hyperbolic that we have the predisposition of chaos in our democratic societies. Morality taught us that to led people proper is to lead them into a future that benefits them all, which is all but an ideal vision of a wise leader. Though it is far from being realistic, but surely we could learn from it to make this world at least a little bit better, isn’t it?
Sources:
Clayton, James. July 17, 2021. “Covid misinformation on Facebook is killing people — Biden”. BBC News. acessed from Covid misinformation on Facebook is killing people — Biden — BBC News, in August 18, 2021.
Guillén, Arturo. 2020. “Coronavirus Crisis or a New Stage of the Global Crisis of Capitalism?”. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. Vol. 9, Issue 3. p. 356–367. DOI: 10.1177/2277976020970040.
Hopf, G. Michael. 2016. Those Who Remain. South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Manica, M., Guzzetta, G., Riccardo, F. et al.2021. “Impact of tiered restrictions on human activities and the epidemiology of the second wave of COVID-19 in Italy”. Nat Commun 12, 4570. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24832-z.
Maragakis, Lisa Lockerd, M.D., M.P.H. November 17, 2020. “Coronavirus Second Wave? Why Cases Increase”. Johns Hopkins Medicine. acessed from Coronavirus Second Wave? Why Cases Increase | Johns Hopkins Medicine, in August 17, 2021.
Mitsuko, Nishikawa. March 3, 2020. “Coronavirus fuels toilet paper panic buying”. NHK World-Japan. acessed from Coronavirus fuels toilet paper panic buying | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News, in August 17, 2021.
Soriano, Vincente, Ganado-Pinilla, G., Sanchez-Santos, M., et al. “Main differences between the first and second waves of COVID-19 in Madrid, Spain”, International Journal of Infectious Disease 105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2021.02.115.
