There are all kinds of stories out there claiming that the threat posed by the New Coronavirus (Covid19 / SARS-CoV-2) would not be real, and that everything is a big global conspiracy for some typically unspecified sinister purpose. Allegedly, the tests are said to be meaningless, and even if there was a threat, it would be marginal, comparable to a seasonal flu. Third, even if there was a threat, it would be dangerous only to the elderly and those that are already vulnerable, and that this would just be one of the normal risks of life, and that we cannot risk the fates of young people for the sake of protecting those allegedly close to death anyway.
How to answer this? If you try to argue with such positions, you may not get far with calling them conspiracy theorists, (Cov-)idiots, or any other insult that you may think helpful. It’s not helpful. In my experience, such positions exists due to an actual and serious concern about the present dangers of lockdowns, about the lives of children, the fate of our economy, the fates of elderly suffering and dying in silence in hospitals, rehab facilities, hospices and retirement homes, and the isolation enforced on grandparents from their children and grandchildren. Additionally, there are perceived threats to the freedoms of speech, of assembly, of protest, etc. All these concerns are real. They are not trivial, they need answers and not ridicule.
The reason that people may have to frame their concerns in conspiratorial ways may well be that these concerns are not taken seriously, not even in part, and that scientists and politicians are horrible at explaining the reasons for the preventative measures taken.
Let me say that first, I am not a medical doctor, I have no degrees or experience in virology, epidemiology, or public health when it comes to matters of disease prevention. I am an interdisciplinary cultural/social/political theorist and historian, with a specialization in humanistic gerontology (or age studies). This is important. Everybody should know their limits. I can tell you something about how people have historically and presently thought and conceptualized their lives, how societies function, how people have been thinking about politics, and how all this may have influenced also how we think about matters of health, life, death and the beyond. I am concerned, for instance, about how people think and feel about aging and old age, and not about the biology of aging.
If I were to say anything medically about Covid19, I would have to research information online. I can do that, but – despite all my academic training in the disciplines mentioned above – I am not trained to evaluate medical information. If I were to research this data on my own, I would certainly display all the symptoms of a first-year medical student: everything would be so overwhelming that I would basically believe everything, and probably display symptoms. There is a reason that medical practitioners and researchers study for many, many, many years, and have to conduct guided research on their own and/or practice medicine for yet many, many more years before finally being able to be considered fully trained. Science may be accessible to anyone, but it requires all this training for a reason. It is complicated, oftentimes counter-intuitive, and laborious.
Furthermore, when it comes to new or unsettled science, you will always find scientists who disagree with the majority opinion; there may even not be a majority opinion at all. This can be even more confounding to a lay audience, and to evaluate frontier science should be left to the experts, and the safest bet is to trust the majority opinion, especially if it comes from researchers and practitioners from around the globe. Yes, the Chinese government initially withheld necessary information, and this was relevant in the initial phases of the pandemic. But by now, we – that is, the experts, but also all of us if we have been paying attention to the news – we all know much more, and we do not anymore rely on the Chinese dictatorship to tell us what’s going on. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) by now seems to have learnt from their mistakes. If experts from countries with governments that seriously do not agree on anything else can agree on Covid19, that agreement should not be underestimated. No matter who you ask, experts from the EU, the US, from Israel, from Canada, from Mexico, from Russia, from China, from Iran, from Saudi Arabia, from India, from Pakistan, from Australia, from Nigeria, from South Africa, from wherever you could possibly think of, if all of them agree, then we should listen intently.
Thus, 1., as laid out before, a global conspiracy is really not likely to happen. The Bill and Melinda Gates has been very much interested at fighting at diseases around the globe, and have frequently warned about the dangers of a coming pandemic. The likelihood of that happening has been, and continues to be, extremely high. After H1N1, SARS-1, MERS, yet another virus transmitted through the respiratory tract was likely to emerge, and any betting person would have assumed it could be a Coronavirus. There is nothing sinister about preparations such as the Pandemic 201 scenario conducted just last year. Also, Covid19 will not be the last Coronavirus to haunt us. We keep bothering nature, and nature will bother us back.
2., the tests are not perfect, but they have been shown to be a good predictor, and I would seriously follow medical and scientific advice. Not a single country benefits from rising infection numbers, from hospitals overburdened, from people dying prematurely. There have been very clear numbers about Covid19 actually killing people, or about hastening mortality – which is the same thing. If a person would have lived longer without a Covid19 infection, then the virus contributed to their death, case closed. Any speculation on the order whether a person died “with” or “from” Covid19 is irrelevant sophistry.
3., masks work, distance works, and airing out works. Independent experts have shown so. Yes, it seems that older people are more at risk. Some of them die close to their life expectancy at birth. But that is a misleading value. If the “life expectancy at birth” is 80, that means that a baby born now will have a chance to live till 80, statistically. But there is a different value also. If a person is currently 80, they still have 10-15 more years life expectancy at 80. If they are 90, they could actually grow to be over 100. This may sound confusing, but again, it is for the experts to decide. Now, who is to decide which life has value or not? Are we seriously considering senicide, the killing (or “letting die”) of the elderly? We are speaking actually of people older than 50 or 60. These are people who still fulfill many social functions, and they also, by the way, have a right to live their life.
Some people are uncomfortable with restrictions like masks and distancing posed upon children or younger people, assuming their risk of dying would be less. We don’t quite know whether this risk may actually climb, as it did during the Spanish Flu, and we also are seeing severe consequences to infection with Covid19, including neurological damage, and possibly permanent impairment of functions of several organs. This disease is new, and from all we know, very serious. It is much worse than the flu (which can be deadly also, but less so). And if it comes to preexisting conditions that may affect whether you survive or not, whether you recover with still much damage or not; we all have such conditions probably, whether we know it or not.
The discomfort or psychological damage of people is serious; but long-term illness or even death are worse. If in order to protect those that need protecting we all need to limit our normal activities, than this is what we will have to do. We have to do that smartly and with as much consideration for all of us as possible, but if we are to survive this as human beings, wearing masks and distancing and airing out are really not too much to ask.
We know that the threat is real because the majority of scientists and experts agrees. Should that agreement break down completely, we can reconsider. But for now, this is real, and we need to act accordingly.
Erratic Attempts 