The appearance of a highly infectious virus that previously did not affect human beings and now does is not some temporary setback. It’s not “magically going away” and is now part of our environment, is among us, and will remain so for a long time. Ignoring the advice of scientists or blaming them for holding back the return to normal is simply creating the conditions for a more serious and sustained crisis. There is no point in restarting vital economic sectors, if after fourteen days — when the cycle of infection is completed — we will simply all have to go back into lockdown.
What should we do when faced with a virus that incompatible with our economic model? Given that the virus won’t change its habits, and that any vaccine we are able to come up with won’t be a magic bullet, the only alternative is to change our economic model. Change our way of life. Start thinking that many of the things we did before March of this year are gone for the foreseeable. Nightclubs, bars? We won’t be going out late for some time. Important sectors of the economy? Sure, but not worth sacrificing lives for. We’re talking about scales of values, not convenience or profit and loss accounts.
What is the point of taking a test if, in the four days it takes to get the results, you’ve gone shopping, to a party, a family reunion and had a few drinks with friends? Either we continue to evolve our methodologies to obtain cheap, immediate and simple diagnostic tests we can take on a regular basis, or we continue chasing shadows.
But beyond diagnostic testing or coming up with a vaccine, there are more radical issues, changes dismissed by many as impossible. A new ecosystem implies a redesign, often radical, of many of our activities. Cities, restaurants, public spaces, travel, prisons, supply chains, health care, trade, education, work, communication… an enormous change that, obviously, the vast majority of the population has yet to imagine.
Most of us thought that once lockdown ended, we’d return to normal, albeit wearing masks, which for many people are an inconvenient, but temporary measure they can’t be bothered to wear properly. We’re seeing the results of this obduracy now.
There will be no return to normality. The pandemic requires us to redesign the economy, rethink our obsession with growth, find ways to protect the most vulnerable, use apps we can trust to trace our contacts, share research and learning, and redesign everything to put people, not profits first.
The only alternative we have — and I’m talking about the only alternative, not some kind of dilemma, is to redesign our lives based on a new reality that will be with us for many years. Until we understand that, we will continue to alternate phases of containment with phases of expansion, all the while waiting for a recovery that in all likelihood will be a mirage, and in the meantime, we’ll continue dying like bed bugs. Either we change our mentality and redefine the economy we know it, or we continue to give the virus opportunities to multiply.
This pandemic goes far beyond masks, hydro-alcoholic gels or lockdowns. The change we need won’t come overnight. But the sooner we understand it, the sooner we can demand that politicians design and implement it, the sooner we can start dealing with it, and the sooner we may realize that, though we don’t yet believe it, the world has changed, before our eyes, in a few months. And when your world changes, if you insist on continuing to do things as before, it’s not going to end well.