You’re not an expert on Covid-19, but nobody is. Scientists don’t know
everything. In this case, they’re just beginning their research. In the absence
of hard data, we have to take theories as mere hypotheses. History teaches us
that to date no disease has been overcome by quarantine measures. Quarantine
measures can save time, not defeat the foe.
The Covid-19 outbreak awakens ancestral
anxieties. Some of us suddenly perceive our neighbors, friends and families as
threats. There is a real risk of violence in the near future.
In the face of any danger, we must first remain reasonable, not rational. These are
two very different ways of thinking. We cannot think logically on the basis of
incomplete data.
Covid-19 is a hitherto unknown disease
which seems to be able to kill up to 1% of the world’s population, but which so
far has killed only a few thousand people. Researchers are just beginning to
study it scientifically. We know that it is caused by a virus that is
transmitted through the mucous membranes of the face. No one knows how to
prevent its spread, but everyone has their own preconceived ideas about it.
Depending on their culture,
scientists have advised the authorities in their countries differently:
The Chinese authorities have
practiced population containment coupled with a home medical visit every two
days. Those suspected of being infected were taken by force to hospital. This
empirical method is consistent with the decrease of this disease. This does not
mean that it has had any effectiveness, nor does it mean that the disease has
been definitively eradicated. The World Health Organization
advocates the confinement of the population, without medical visits at home.
The WHO assumes that children become healthy carriers of the disease and infect
grandparents in whom the disease can develop acutely. The Swedish authorities are
trying a third method. They consider that only the elderly need to be protected
and that there is no evidence that the disease is spread by children. They are
therefore only confining the elderly and not closing down schools or
businesses.
Which
of these three schools is right, assuming that one of them is right? We cannot
know until all three methods have been tried and tested over a long period of
time.
However,
we must remember that never in history has an epidemic been overcome by
quarantines, but only by hygienic measures. Quarantines do not protect
populations in which the disease is already present, they can only save a
little time.
We must beware of the anguish that leads our political leaders to take
the measures that they consider to be the most radical, i.e. the most
traumatic, compared to those already taken by their neighbours. The escalation
of these measures teaches us the level of panic of our leaders, not the means
to fight the disease.
Moreover, as always, some political
leaders are instrumenting the crisis according to their personal agendas.
Over the past twenty-five years, the
developed world has experienced several episodes of collective delirium. During
the mad cow crisis, we sacrificed cattle on huge bonfires; at the time of Y2K,
we thought that planes would fall from the sky on our heads; in the face of
9/11, we thought that barbarians would destroy Western civilization; and so on
and so forth. In retrospect, all of this seems ridiculous. Consult old
newspapers and you will see the credulity of the public, not that of our
ancestors, but of ourselves, a few years ago.
The West is less and less reasonable
and more and more dogmatic. We have unknowingly adhered to a religious form of
thought in which we have replaced the supposed divine will with supposed
scientific knowledge.
Science tells us little about Covid-19
and nothing at all about how to prevent its spread. We are only at the stage of
hypothesis.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
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