Grappling with the other pandemic
We feared that there would be a hierarchy of misery. Our fears were confirmed.
Dear friend,
These days we spend most of our time indoors, but the seasons are indeed changing. In Bengal the kaash flowers have blossomed. Durga Puja is almost over. In temperate climates, leaves have changed colors, and have started to fall. It is a few days to Día de Muertos and Halloween.
From the start of the pandemic, we saw the seasons pass by like they did in less eventful years. This has lent a surreal quality to 2020. In Satyajit Ray’s film about the Bengal Famine of 1943, Ashani Shanket (“Distant Thunder”), even in the midst of death and destruction, landscapes were verdant. There were fluttering butterflies. Yet millions died in a famine that was largely preventable. There is a clear message: in the worst of times, human misery is compounded by the actions of other humans.
I can say with certainty that I’m not the same person that I was a few months ago. I know this to be true for all of us. Thinking about how life was like in January feels like having an out-of-body-experience. Traveling. Staying at hotels. Eating out at restaurants. Going to concerts and sporting events. Socializing with friends. Going to work. Was any of it even real?
2020 has been our collective annus horribilis. We are all exhausted.
In a few short months, we have realized that the global economy was not as strong as we had been led to believe. Society was not as fair or forgiving as we had imagined it. And all it took to rend the world asunder was an invisible virus. For the dispossessed and the oppressed the edifices had been hollow the whole time.
I have tried to keep up with scientific information on the virus. I believe that to know is better than the alternative. Information may be paralyzing, but it is preferable to ignorance.
But that is not the entire story. I read and write about the viral pandemic because it conforms to known rules. There are limitations to what this virus can do physically. The complexities of people and societies—the social and moral pandemic that we are witnessing unfold before our eyes is unmatched in cruelty—it brings fresh horrors every day. We have a moral duty to talk about it. Octavio Paz was right. We do not write to kill time or to revive it. We write so that we may live and be revived.
At the start of the pandemic I had feared that there would be a hierarchy of misery. My fears have been confirmed. As the French anthropologist Didier Fassin eloquently stated—“the politics of life are the politics of inequality.”
Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to listen in on the Annual Meeting of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. In one session there were noted public health officials from China, South Africa, United Kingdom, Peru, and the United States who spoke about their experiences in dealing with the pestilent coronavirus in 2020. Although no heath official from India spoke, I noticed many commonalities.
South Africa and Peru imposed strict lockdowns in March at the same time India did. In South Africa, a severe lockdown was successful in flattening the curve which bought time to learn about and manage the disease. But the lockdown resulted in economic devastation and a spike in gender violence. A huge increase in hunger and mental illness has been witnessed. Those who are HIV-positive have been reluctant to seek healthcare. And funds allotted for COVID-19 has been misused, with strong evidence of widespread corruption.
Peru has faced issues with respect to the unequal access to healthcare in that country. Informal workers cannot follow quarantine measures because they face starvation. Many risk imprisonment. The poor live in overcrowded conditions where social distancing is impossible. And delays in the procurement and distribution of personal protective equipment has resulted in many lost lives. In addition, there is a single public sector institute with molecular testing capability for the entire country (in Lima).
Compared to India, Peru, or South Africa, the United States is a nation with far greater resources. But this country has gone through such a disastrous debacle in trying to control the spread of the virus that to call it even an “effort” would be an effrontery to the word. In just a few days, there will be elections that give the people the chance to change the status quo. In the United States, 225,000 people have died. Racial minorities have been disproportionately affected. Most of these deaths could have been prevented.
At the same time, a new article in Nature Medicine predicts that 130,000 lives could be saved by universal mask use in the next four months in the United States. Yet, as the past few months have shown, short of strict restrictions some people will continue to refuse to wear masks though lives depend on it. How can I understand this mentality? How can I explain this to a child who has been on this planet only a few years?
I was speaking with a friend earlier today. We commiserated about the limitations imposed on our lives by social distancing. We cannot go out to eat or travel. Schools and offices are closed. We have not seen our family members in over a year. This Puja has felt quite hollow since we haven’t been able to go see the protimas and pandals in person. But we are privileged. By and large, we have transferred much of own risk of infection to others who are poor and disadvantaged to keep our lives minimally disrupted.
People like us have the luxury of working from home, eating three meals a day, complaining about overloaded broadband, and imagining a future when this horrible pandemic finally ends. What about the itinerant construction-worker, the bus driver, the migrant, or the rag picker to whom the present has been presented as a fait accompli? You can starve now, or risk disease and death from a virus later.
The virus was the catalyst, but it was not the sole villain. We did this to ourselves. The pandemic presents an opportunity to finally create equitable societies with social safety nets and universal healthcare.
The holidays are a time for reflection. I hope we emerge from this crisis wiser and kinder. As the days get shorter, may we all be granted wisdom and light.
Shubho Bijoya.
Stay well.
Anirban
A note.
Thank you for putting up with my musings for two months now. Most of you found my newsletter through Twitter. Before the start of the pandemic, I tweeted about travel, food, books, and philosophy. I happily wrote personal essays about my favorite places in the world and my favorite poets. Then the world collapsed and I felt there was no longer separation between what I did at work and what was going on around me. I felt I had something to say. My day job involves interacting with academic scientists, but writing science for the public is much harder than writing for other scientists. To write for a general audience, we have to set aside assumptions, discard a common technical language, and abandon peculiar formulaic (and precise) ways of expression. We have to summarize data in simple words.
Please do let me know how I’m doing so far and what you’d like me to cover in the coming weeks.
The link for the hardcover “COVID-19: Separating Fact from Fiction” is now available on Amazon’s Indian site.