My current plan is that this month will be the last time I will write a monthly post re: COVID. My first COVID post was for January-March, 2020. It’s been a long three years. (Robin)
Is 120,000 current COVID deaths per year now considered normal?
Outbreaks of sudden diseases will continue to test us again and again in future years. The pandemic is not the primary. It’s people and their physiological and psychological makeup, and hence their response to it, that is driving the pandemic response,.
This has been determined through research spanning back centuries. Over many generations, mistrust and misunderstanding has been allowed to continue and develop. People that had grandparents or other relatives that had suffered or died during the pandemic of 1918 have greater distrust towards the government than those that have not. That loss and devastation was inheritable.” So we are uncertain as to what the long term psychological damage will be.
The reactions that build on the distrust can be positive: the best of human nature, such as people looking out for each other. The negative: the worst side of human nature. Finding someone to blame. Banding together to take direct action to perceived government overreach, resistance to authority, and even political violence.
Learning this made me recall what my mother had shared with me regarding her decision (and that of many others) to bottle-feed and why she had never considered breastfeeding.
The relationship between Pandemics and Political Violence
Go way back and blame it on the Spartans. Currently, a rising minority of Christians have been blamed. Political parties have been blamed. Jews and gypsies have been blamed. Asians have been blamed, (and not just for COVID). There has been an increase in antisocial behavior. The long-term stats on murders is disturbing. Currently, random social aggression not connected with ordinary crime (such as muggings or robberies) is occurring with greater frequency. Other examples are unruly passengers on airplanes.
People are on edge and quick to violence. This was seen many centuries ago. Is it the result of isolation? Social Stress? Widespread mental illness? There is no explanation.
How does poor communication affects this? Many think it does affect cultural divide, making it worse. Pandemic communication and misinformation was studied, including how misleading information started and spread. Some would think, who would believe this? They found that some people believe in the existence of a “fire-breathing devil.” So religious beliefs factored into where misinformation would find root to get beyond the rumor and take steps to block the rumor. But it was just like dealing with a contagious disease …. it mutated and went beyond the perimeter and spread from there. And THIS was occurring in the 80’s and the 90’s ……
And now, we have a different political environment. We have the internet and social media. Back then, it was mouth to mouth spreading. Now a tweet can go to millions within a few hours. The velocity and magnitude of spread is hard to imagine. This is a fundamental change from times past.
If we were dealing with the Black Death, where bodies were piling up on the street, it would be different. COVID killed many lives, but not bodies piling on the street. But in the absence of imminent doom or loss, conclusions were different based on economic consequences, social distancing, isolation, closing of schools, supply chain issues, etc … not the loss of life. Many people weren’t affected by that. And we were in a polarized society prior to COVID.
So people developed political attitudes and deepened the divide. It was serious enough to gather attention but not serious enough to bring us all together and settle our differences in the interest of bonding.
The pandemic was exploited and hijacked to further political ambitions and agendas. This isn’t new, it is a recurring theme. There is information such as genocidal fantasies regarding how to exploit the pandemic to attack certain people.
What is going on here?
It’s not about the fire-breathing dragon. It’s about the dragon’s wagging tail.
Jenkins, Brian Michael, The Lawfare Podcast (Pandemics and Political Violence: December 4, 2022)
Public resistance and public uprisings occurred in centuries before. So the current fatigue and resistance should be understood as inevitable.
A Humbling Experience for Scientists
We thought we knew everything about the immune system and viruses–and still there have been 6 million deaths. I think from global health systems all the way down to allergies and immunology, there are still some fundamental features we still don’t understand, and we haven’t been paying attention to them. It took a pandemic to make us wake up and say, “You know what? This is serious stuff.” So yeah, there has been some humbling.
Jeffrey Kluger (interview with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author regarding cancer and COVID (TIME: November 7/November 14, 2022)