Italy - March 11, 2020
Now that the media storm surrounding coronavirus has started to die down, we're starting to see a bit more clarity around some of the issues. As the entire Italian territory is now under an unprecedented regime of exceptional rule, we can start to draw a few conclusions on how closely the biological and political aspects of the current emergency are related, being careful not to conflate the two, which would only add to the general sense of confusion.
The first fact that is beyond discussion is the exponentional level of growth seen among people requiring medical care and the deceased, which has doubled steadily every two to three days. The spread of the contagion is no illusion, it's a real fact that could overwhelm our medical system within a few weeks. This would have stark social consequences in regions like Campania and Sicily, where the health system is routinely overburdened, even for much less dramatic reasons.
Another much more reassuring fact - albeit not yet confirmed - is that the number of people who have had the virus and who have developed mild symptoms could be far bigger than what we can tell from the actual testing. It's possible, then, that the virus is actually far less deadly than we thought, and the so-called peak of the disease is closer than we might have feared, as the data from China seems to suggest. We might even dare to hope that the disease will run its course without causing milions of deaths like the Spanish flu or the Asian flu.
Obviously, this sense of hope is bolstered by the greater level of efficiency that we're seeing in technology and in medical systems, compared to the past. In contrast, it's altogether more difficult to assess the actual usefulness of the political measures that have been taken so far. The general impression is that they are based on a principle that is not lacking in common sense. In the abstract, if in the next three weeks nobody in Italy were to come into contact with anybody else (if, to take an extreme example, husbands and wives no longer shared the same bed, parents no longer embraced their children, and doctors stayed away from their patients), the contagion would be impossible and the emergency would come to an end. The aim of the government's measures is to come as close as possible to this ideal situation. It's not so much that we must cancel social life altogether, but rather suspend it until further notice, channelling communications through technologies and social media and encouraging people to work from home. Right or wrong, the rationale seems to be supported by the vast majority of the population, which has taken on board the new rules with a surprising amount of zealousness. Maybe not everyone goes so far as to accuse young people who still want to celebrate birthdays together - or for that matter, older people who still insist on going out for coffee - of being 'criminals' or at the very least 'irresponsible'. It must be said, however, that at least for the time being, obedience to the new rules has certainly been reinforced by the collective reproach directed against those who choose to rebel. Reducing the current measures, or revoking them altogether, would seem like a pointless exercise at this moment, not to mention that it would be very unpopular at a time when no other alternatives seem to exist. And yet, there is no doubt that these measures are worrying, given how they have been able to do away with the social fabric of our daily lives, placing an entire population under a regime of solitude and police surveillance that is all too similar to the darkest times of the recent political past. The crucial question is therefore to understand whether this is actually no more than a temporary situation, or whether it's a dress rehearsal for what will in fact become normal life in the not-so-distant future.
This worry is justified by the fact that the destruction of the social fabric of life and the obsessiveness of control in the name of 'public health' did not simply come about because of coronavirus. It's been at least a century since our modern social mechanisms have attempted to usher in a society based on isolation, where the spontaneous nature of social life is seen as an obstacle or even a threat to the stability of the system. The point is that, in the past, the productive system could not afford to do without bodies, voices and hands that could work together. Sure, it could limit and control their interactions, but it couldn't get rid of them altogether. Today we can, thanks to the marvels of modern technology. It might sound paradoxical, but for the first time ever, society can rid itself entirely of that beautifully human thing that is sociality, without even paying that high a price for it. How do we know, then, that we're not actually getting ready for this new development?
To avoid any misunderstandings, let's clarify once and for all that the answer will not be that this is a conspiracy, a Spectre or some other kind of sinister embodiment of Power. Social phenomena do not follow a script, they are rather the result of the indeterminate push-and-pull of autonomous forces. There are no puppeteers, only puppets that move the theatre this way and that, each one moving differently, and often in spite of one's own best intentions. When the disease will be over, there will definitely be a joyous return to sociality, one that no democratic government will even dare to suppress. It is also likely that many companies will decide that so-called "smart working" is actually quite convenient, and they will ask their employees not to dismantle the emergency workstations that they had improvised at home. Many supposedly right-thinking members of our society will point out that the closure of nightlife venues certainly has its upsides, at least as far as public order is concerned, and only as long as the interests of the tourism and entertainment industries are not jeopardised. And certainly, many "identitarian" political forces will remind us that diseases (not this one, mind you) take root especially among the homeless and the undocumented, and that a strict social hygiene is vital for public health. In general, however, we will discover that there is ultimately no social life without risk of contagion, just as there is no organic life without risk of disease or even death. We will found ourselves then in front of a fundamentally political question: until what point are we willing to risk our biological safety just for the sake of having a meal with a friend, of embracing our children, or even just chatting away with those who hang around until late in our squares? Where do we set the bar for deciding when our social happiness takes priority over the safeguard of our health? When does political existence become more important than biological survival? It's a good thing that coronavirus is forcing us overnight to ask these questions of ourselves, because the future of our society depends on what answers we give, in our actions and not just in our statements.
Translated and reposted from: https://www.quodlibet.it/la-minaccia-del-contagio-di-massimo-de-carolis with the author's permission.