Silver linings of a pandemic
I can't help thinking and feeling that our Universe has a very special way to repair itself and reminds us that despite the Avengers series, we are still very far from being able to control our destiny.
The coronavirus is a terrible thing. And even more so when we know that the real figures are much higher as confirmed tonight, finally, by UK's Chief Medical officer (600 cases confirmed but real number closer to 10000...and it's the same everywhere, including China, i.e. closer to 2 to 3 million cases worldwide...so far).
We are in it for a while and although it seems to work as a series of concentric circles that keep decreasing on size from the point of peak, it will take many months before we can go back to a normal life.
Yet, two sides at the very opposite of the political and ideological spectrum will find some comfort in the growingly chaotic environment.
1. Pro-isolationists: Brexiters, Trade tariffs supporters, anti-immigration and anti-globalisation groups will and maybe already see the pandemic as a world scale legitimation of their isolationist position. Hard to object that over-dependency on "outsourced everything" could leave the western countries in dire lack of essential supplies if things were set to last. And that higher controls at borders could have helped contain the pandemic.
2. Environmentalists, sustainable economists, green activists: they have been ridiculed, tagged as a bunch of utopian with idealistic expectations, even by reasonably sincere believers in the need to "Save the Planet" and reduce the potentially irreversible damage to our ecosystems. Most ambitious plans talked about reducing pollution from flights to 2005 levels...by 2050. Same for most polluting industries, especially intensive agri-agro oriented activities. Anything more drastic has been coined as impossible, irresponsible and a source for a global economic slowdown. I am pretty sure that we are today way below 2005 levels, and yes, this comes with a major economic slowdown.
The mistake could be to think that as soon as the virus will be truly contained, with a vaccin or similar remedy, things will go back to normal. It will not.
First because we are only at the beginning of the pandemic and we don't know how badly and deeply we will be affected. The market crash, no matter how impressive and disastrous it is to corporates and people's savings all over the world is only the tip of the iceberg of the global economic slowdown that will certainly happen in the aftermath of this crisis. Nobody dares yet uttering the word but "global deflation" is in all the minds.
That will in turn force companies, investors, policy-makers but first and foremost the global public to rethink priorities in the rebuilding of the economy. That may include relocalisation of industries and accelerated progresses on climate change. It might be mild if the virus is contained by the summer. It will be deep if it continues beyond. But only if this does not trigger a global debt crisis which everybody knew should have happened a while ago but had started to think will not happen.
Truth however is that there is real silver lining in this story. Beyond cleaner air and waters. It is the legacy of this pandemic for the younger ones. What they have witnessed is the Universe deciding to take its destiny in his own hands. As if fed up by decades of inaction, political platitudes and more or less elaborate lies, excuses and arrogance, the Cosmos is reminding us that this World is not ours and that we have no right to mortgage it for our own immediate benefit, expecting future generations to cover the bill and inherit a ruin.
They have also witnessed that everything that was meant to be impossible has happened in a matter of weeks, that everyone that felt himself "King of the World", may it be on the East or the West, stands now powerless in front of a microscopic particle and that all the models promising infinite growth to Financial markets have been reduced to a bunch of meaningless algorithms in a matter of days.
This is, for all of us, a fantastic opportunity for renewed hope in the future. Because even the impossible is possible. Because the most powerful are simply human and will have to be accountable for their mistakes. Because algorithms, artificial intelligence and automation. is still limited to the boundaries of what people think is reasonable to expect.
This is a fantastic opportunity for us to take back control of our life and for generation Z to have the chance at a real, meaningful one. It might be the reason why, in its great wisdom, The Universe may have chosen to spare them from the pandemic. We would be fool not to see the message on the cosmic wall.