CoVID Diary – week 17
2020 will undoubtedly be dubbed the international year of the Coronavirus even though it’s clear that neither national borders, political blocs or the Gregorian calendar will define its boundaries. Having said that, the start of the pandemic pretty much coincided with the beginning of the year and many of us are resigned to this year being a write off in many ways.
In insurance terms a write off is a very neat device but there will be nothing neat about the impact, not only of the virus but the attempts to deal with it, will have. Despite the piss poor response by the UK government (particularly in England) it looks exemplary compared to the maelstrom that is awaiting the criminal response by US government which has largely been to use the opportunity afforded by the crisis to perform the biggest wealth grab in world history.
But we should not be fooled into believing any of the countries who have come out of this smelling of roses, are a model for the way forward. We will do well to hand pick the positives but we should not forget that we are still governed by neoliberal administrations and unaccountable corporations. We shouldn’t allow these events to overshadow what is happening in the outrageous extradition of Julian Assange which boils down to suppressing freedom of speech throughout the world.
Freedom of expression might not feel that important when you’re doing your shop at Tesco’s but everything about that experience has been shaped by corporations who dictate what is on the shelves and who was exploited in order to provide it at that cost and in those quantities. Walmart is infamous for purposefully erasing the competition in towns that it has been instrumental in destroying. It’s customers are left to feed off their own carcass.
One of the significant dangers in easing the lockdown is the loss of focus. Despite the social distancing we have been drawn together as communities, exemplified in the almost universal adherence to lockdown rules — nothing to do with the government as much as they like to take credit. But we have to recognise that this repair in communities was only temporary. If we are to capitalise on this we will need to reinvent community, not expect what we’ve experienced to magically bind us as we go forward. Brexit is going to hit us again in January and it’s not going to be pretty.
Social media and news networks have exploded throughout this year though politics has gone back to business as usual and the mainstream media is still up to its old tricks. CoVID-19 might well haver been a catalyst for change but it has no voice and will, by default, be used to oppress, rather than liberate, us. The environmental holiday will come to an end with a vengeance and our there will be little to celebrate even when (and if) we get an effective vaccine. Society has a shockingly bad memory and, as a whole, surprisingly little agency. It will be led by the nose for good or ill so we can forget about it coming to its own conclusions. Today’s polling numbers are just today’s polling numbers. Public opinion is mere metadata.
CoVID-19 is not a movement and has no manifesto. It doesn’t care about success or failure and cannot have its feelings hurt. It had no hit list or malice aforethought and sought no trophies. Its not a hero for improving our environment or a villain for taking lives. Epidemiologists and immunologists will pore over the data directly related to the virus for decades but every aspect of our lives was impacted by the measures governments took. As novel as the virus is, epidemics can be modelled and the bulk of the consequences have been down to human failure, inaction and criminality (as is the case in most crises).
Its almost prophetic the way 2020 has condenced centuries of exploitation, genocide, greed and general abuse and focused minds on the fundamental problems blighting the modern world. Twenty-twenty, immortalised in the Apollo space program, means having the exceptional vision required to navigate a critical incident. We must encapsulate 2020 because politicians and bad faith actors will be more than willing to allow the crisis to bleed into the coming years of this decade without careful examination. 2020 must not be allowed to be a commentary on all that’s wrong with the world but must be the high point of neoliberalism rather than a mere glitch in its ascendency.