Radical thinking in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic is a delicate topic to discuss. Not that it should be, as far as I am concerned. No more than many other things. So, brace yourself, this is a long (but hopefully not too painful) read.

It is sad to see a lot of polarisation, arguments by authority, attempts to silence this or that opinion, opportunistic dismissal of facts and ideological inconsistencies, etc. As a result, profound, radical thinking around this issue has been rare, discouraged and overlooked.

In my view, radical ideas and opinions should aim to address the root (from the latin: radix) of an issue, with little concern about difficulties, consequences, popular consensus and consolidated cultural beliefs. It has proven difficult to hear any of this in the last two years. Most have engaged in a discussion of the solutions to the pandemics (vaccines, lockdowns, vaccine passports, etc.), with emphasis on their moral implications on the one hand, and their effectiveness on the other.

I am not particularly interested in this aspect. In fact, whether or not I protect myself from Covid-19 and/or its socio-political implications is important to me on a personal level, but that's a private issue and of little use to anybody. And as for the "what other people should do" - I would hardly have any right, authority or qualification to argue whether one behaviour is better than another; this is not a mode of thinking that I find beneficial engaging in.

However, I wish to touch upon a few points that have been, in my opinion, somewhat overlooked. These are concerned with the nature of the Covid-19 issue, and its amazing ability to highlight critical aspects of the systems that govern our living.

I hope that, if anything, this might serve to stimulate a more radical discussion, which looks at facts and issues on a fundamental and systemic level. Please feel free to enrich this with your thoughts, especially if they are critical and challenge my points.

Here we go:

• For lots of political and economic actors there is a lot to be gained, in terms of attention and thus money, from pouring fuel on the fire of polarised debates. Thus, every individual is either pro- or anti- this or that, a believer or a denier, a responsible or selfish person, and so on. To the detriment of in-depth and radical thinking. But oftentimes this flattens the complexity of what we may be thinking and feeling. Every measure or decision made by us or our governments can be argued for or against, and ultimately it’s not a matter of being right or wrong, but of creating a space for free thinking and open discussion.
• Covid-19, unlike some other challenges that we are facing, is not a threat to the permanence of the human species on earth, and it does not endanger biodiversity in any measure. On the contrary, all the means that we have conceived to control Covid-19, apart from prevention (more on this below), require industrial-scale research and production and thus directly or indirectly harm human life on earth and biodiversity.
• The extent of the Covid-19 spread and its consequences is not due to the virus itself, but to the way population is distributed and organised over the land (urbanisation) and the way individuals interact with each other on a daily basis. Rural and low-consumption societies (see Ted Trainer’s work) would not be so badly affected by a virus such as Covid-19. In a certain measure, lockdowns (i.e., rearrangements of human distribution and interactions) could be seen as an attempt to transform urbanised, busy environments in isolated, rural-like ones. This is, in my view, one of the key points, although not many are willing to discuss it openly. Urbanisation and globalisation, and not humans as such, are the vectors of the virus. Earthquakes don’t kill, poorly built structures that fall do.
• As anyone who has studied biology, ecology and has any practical experience of the ecosystems knows, what we like to call "health" and "stability" in nature are always the result of complex, dynamic interactions on a macro- and micro- scale. Pathogens in soil, food and in the human body are often controlled by the multi-level response of a diverse population of pre-existing, vigorous microbes. I personally believe that diversity and complexity are often more durable and "radical" approaches to address pathogens. Obviously, in rare emergencies, it can make sense to harm diversity to allow for fast and effective control of something very dangerous. The approach we have taken with Covid-19 has been dominated by emergency-thinking. Whether advised by politicians, citizens or expert scientists, this is a political choice - not a a scientific one. For instance, there is little excuse for completely overlooking any discussion of prevention, despite current research and previous knowledge exist on this.
• On a more political level, our so-called modern democracies are not prepared to guarantee individual and collective rights at the same time. They either deny responsibility (by claiming that "science" has an opinion), or resort to somewhat authoritarian measures. Please note that I am not saying this is wrong, I am just noting. Le Bon’s "Psychologies of crowds" is surprisingly applicable in this case, especially when he describes how "latin"/catholic people are more concerned with the collective independence of the sect to which they belong, and are ready to violently suppress any opinion that threatens this, whereas anglo-saxon ones focus on the independence of the individual and its will, refraining from allowing the institutions to control individual behaviours, even if this can potentially have collective consequences.
  There is obviously no right or wrong, but some individuals are really coming together in an extraordinarily passive way - reinforcing group identity in an attempt to convince themselves and others that there is a "right way". At the same time, individuals taking courageous, outside-the-box stances are rare.
• Our current socio-economic systems are not capable of developing and distributing any technology without increasing inequality in favour of those who own "the means of production" - that is - private multinational corporations. Our public institutions have failed to discover, produce, distribute, obtain transparency and negotiate convenient contracts on vaccines and therapies. They have resorted to buying from private bodies, which profit from the situation and have demanded high levels of secrecy both on contracts and formulations, despite benefiting from public funding. It was the only way to make this happen fast; nevertheless, it begs for deep consideration. Do we want it to be like this? What about othere situations, where no profit-driven company might have an interest in contributing?
• Social and mass news media have a frightening power when it comes to shaping the opinion of billions of people from completely different social and cultural groups. I believe that this has never been so evident and dangerous. Those who follow the news are not only (as research has repeatedly shown) vulnerable to develop mental health issues just because of the news itself, but are also being continuously bombarded with arguments by authority. What counts are the credentials of the speaker and their charisma, and three things are always craftily overlooked. First, that the selection of the speaker, within a group of equally qualified candidates, is very subjective and often politically motivated. Second, that world-class experts are subject to making mistakes, feeling peer-pressure, being driven by vanity and corruption as much as any other human being. Thirdly, most of what we call "the media" have a corporate structure and private interests. This is true of mainstream-conformist press, conspiracy-oriented platforms and everything in between.