Stavros Lygeros: The four ideological delusions that the coronavirus killed

The second and strongest wave of the pandemic came to underscore the lessons that the first gave us. We may be separated from the vaccine (?) by a few months, but the coronavirus has already dispelled the delusion of the post-war generation, that humanity has finally left behind what caused the catastrophes of previous centuries. The ones that essentially sealed History for centuries.

After the war, nuclear competition imposed peace, even if it took the form of the Cold War. Although peace has sometimes been threatened, it has generally established the impression that wars, like the two world wars of the 20th century, are a thing of the past. Wars will be fought, but they will be regional and will not touch westerners.

At the moment this impression is confirmed, but we are going through a transitional period. The steady slide from the post-Cold War “bipolar” international system to an increasingly unstable, and potentially anarchic, multipolar international system may in the future disprove this first certainty. It is obvious to the naked eye that in parallel with the rivalries of the great powers, local rivalries are actively manifested, which create contradictory fronts of alliances, a fact that intensifies geopolitical fluidity.

A second delusion is that humanity is no longer threatened by deadly pandemics. Some kind of epidemics, of course, will occur every now and then, but, due to its evolution, science will quickly intervene and bring them under control, without essentially disrupting the daily life of at least westerners. This was generally the case with previous epidemics. All of them may have left dead behind, but they were not able to upset even temporarily the normality of the way of life.

The coronavirus has come to dispel this delusion in a deafening way. What humanity has been experiencing since the first months of 2020 is unprecedented, almost nightmarish. These events have no precedent in history. If someone said a year ago what is happening today, they would consider him crazy. And yet, today we are all living what we thought was unlikely to happen.

Coronavirus and “herd immunity”

Having now the experience of the first wave, it became clear what countries that had initially chosen “herd immunity”, that is, not taking drastic measures, underwent. They have paid and continue to pay dearly in lives for their choice. Greece was rather lucky. The fact that in Italy the pandemic was, at one time, a phase ahead, was a factor that pushed the Mitsotakis government to take drastic restrictive measures without delay.

In this way, we managed not to have an uncontrolled spread of the virus during the first wave. The suffocating economic pressure, however, combined with the optimistic estimates at the beginning of the summer, pushed the government to open the country, in order to mitigate somewhat the inevitable heavy blow to tourism and consequently to the economy as a whole.

The summer relaxation at the level of both the administrative measures and the psychology of the citizens led to the resurgence of the pandemic with a steep rise in both cases and deaths. And this, while scientists were talking about a second wave, probably more intense and more deadly. This also happened in Greece. That’s how we got to the second current lockdown. In fact, the data show that we will not easily get rid of the coronavirus and its possible mutations.

This truth is not just philosophical. It is also very practical. The first big lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic is that states must have fast reflexes, a strong public health system, and the ability to supply the necessary materials to protect their population. It is true that the hospital part of the public hospitals in Greece is unacceptable, with the result that many citizens resort to private clinics. In difficult times, however, it is the public sector that has borne and continues to bear all the weight.

The come back of the state

The pandemic has come to dispel a third ideology: that we must head toward a shrinking state, unable to stop the gallop of private initiative, as the neo-liberals claim. Their criticism that the state is inherently bureaucratic, counterproductive, and inefficient has a dose of truth. This does not mean, however, that the recipe “one cuts off his nose, to spite one’s face” is justified.

The reason why they then said the exact opposite of what they say now is simple: in those days there was no stock of masks, not even antiseptics. So they used their scientific authority to make up “fairy-tales” to thus appease ordinary citizens, who were justifiably looking for ways to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

But why, even overdeveloped western countries, did not have stocks or even could not directly make masks and respirators? The answer is also simple: These materials, low-tech but vital to public health, ended up being made almost exclusively in China and some other low-cost countries. This is how the Western world was found last spring begging the Chinese for a load of masks and respirators.

The disease should have become a lesson, but I am afraid that we may return to the same point, when the health crisis is a thing of the past and the memories of those days will have faded in the collective consciousness. The lesson, however, is clear: Necessary materials, not only for public health but also for defense, become vital to a country in times of crisis. Therefore, whether they will be manufactured domestically or imported should not be decided solely on the basis of cost.

The “crusaders” of unbridled globalization have to land in reality, although their ideological “Talibanism” will probably prevent them from seeing the obvious: as the pandemic has shown, when the storm comes, every country looks out for itself first. it is not going to change with neoliberal rhetoric.