Viruses have been around far longer than humans and will likely outlast them. There are millions of types and thousands of species of viruses. A virus does not reproduce, but replicates on contact with a living cell. A virus is not capable of auto-mobility, but must be transported between living organisms by direct or indirect contact. Scientists do not consider the virus as dead or alive; the poliovirus, for example, if stored at minus 20 centigrade, can be kept in suspended animation—inert yet potent—indefinitely.
A quarter-century ago, the relation between humans and viruses was seen as an implacable war of two worlds. Accordingly, viruses and other “invading hordes” continuously “attack” the human “immune system”, which, through antibodies, attempts to “defend” itself. Last February, SARS-CoV-2 was crowned an agent of global disease. From China to the US, all nations bowed before this coronated virus that colonised its human hosts to propagate. Deferring to the invisible threat against all humanity, many nations imposed a lockdown.
The lockdown is designed to slow down but not eliminate death and disease, and as such resembles a military strategy called “defence in depth”. That strategy does not presume to stop or rebuff an overwhelming enemy force with a firmly defended front. Instead, the enemy is allowed to advance into the interior, inducing it to stretch and diffuse its forces. By delaying a frontal confrontation, the defenders get time to shore up defences and mount counterattacks. The lockdown suppresses the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by confining its potential agents. The period of confinement is used to increase the availability of hospital beds, ventilators and protective equipment. The population is then released from confinement at a rate never greater than the capacity of health facilities.
The results of a model made by a highly regarded scientific team from Imperial College, London, predicted 5,10,000 Britons would die from Covid-19 if no measures were taken to stem the disease. A few weeks later a rival scientific model from Oxford predicted far fewer deaths. By assuming social distancing and recalibrating the model parameters, the original team reduced its own estimate of excess deaths by 98% to about 10,000. Similarly, the results of a model by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, Washington, suggested between 1,00,000 and 2,40,000 Americans would die from the virus even with social distancing policies in place. Ten days later, the revised IHME estimate of the same number was 61,000. The wild swings in estimates prove why modelled results cannot be confused with evidence.
The often-heard appeal that politicians should give way to professionals is to ask for government by experts. But a technocracy is not a democracy. Nor is it a remedy for an oligarchy, much less for an incipient autocracy. At least notionally, modern political regimes acknowledge that the power of governments to make laws, implement them and judge infractions against them must be separated. Hence, the well-known architecture of distinct but overlapping legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.
Two pandemics: There are two pandemics underway. In the strict sense of all people, (Greek: pan demos), Covid-19 is the lesser pandemic. The fear of the virus is the greater pandemic. Far fewer people have been infected by it than are aware of it. The smallpox virus that decimated much of the aboriginal peoples on the American continents was carried from Europe at the speed of ships. Sars-CoV-2 travels at the speed of jet planes. Throughout human history, infectious agents have been carried at the speed of human travel along trade routes. In the 21st century, the fear of the virus moves at the speed of what the screen shows.
Flattening the curve is the popular way to explain the mechanics of the lockdown. The curve shows the expected number of infected humans over a period of time. By instituting behavioural controls like handwashing and limiting large gatherings, the number of cases can be kept at or below the healthcare system capacity, which includes nurses, doctors, ICUs, ventilators and the like. Calibrating the number of expected deaths by available hospital resources is an exercise in the field of supply chain management, well known to industrial engineers and hospital administrators. It was this style of just-in-time management that previously gutted the facilities so much that it caused New York hospitals to be almost overwhelmed by sick patients during the flu season of 2018. Then, excess capacity was reduced. Now, excess infections are flattened.
The law to care: The feeling of doom is in the air. The lockdown has exacerbated the sense of catastrophe. Whether they are the migrant workers massed on the borders of Indian states or the millions in the US who have lost their jobs, many are suddenly cast adrift without a livelihood. Countless more experience the menace of an invisible pestilence, not knowing when they will be released from confinement, anxious about ever being freed from continuous and intimate surveillance. A low-grade fever of panic and consternation afflicts many millions across the world. Some have begun to express this in acts of surly rebellion. Others mutely comply waiting for the ill-wind to blow over. Many, if not all, wish the program to save lives will work swiftly and that life will return to normal.
Sars-CoV-2 is neither alive nor dead. It transitioned out of suspended animation to infect its human hosts. In their fight against it, humans parodied the virus and made obvious that the condition of suspended animation is not aberrant. The question is whether the normalcy of a fetishised life and its supporting apparatuses will remain at the epicentre of what is to come.
Sajay Samuel
Author of Beyond Economics and Ecology & professor at State College, Pennsylvania
(Email ID: sxs26@psu.edu)