Age of Irony

 

Twenty twenty-two was a year and a half. Now, thankfully, we have seen its back with that of one of the existential issues of our times. I speak of Covid-19, of course, which, during its peak, had confined most of us to barracks. Happily, the majority of us survived it, and are now returning to something like normalcy. We are still not yet back to the relaxed ways of pre-pandemic days, though. Whatever satisfaction we may feel at this point, it is well to remember that the pandemic has taken nearly 7 million lives. These dead are not just numbers. They left behind deeply scarred families who watched their loved ones sicken and die. The worst is now over. Probably. We must spare a thought though, for those among us who avoided Covid’s worst outcome, yet survive to contend with the debilitating symptoms of “Long Covid”.

The virus’s other legacy, the economic one, endures too. The pandemic disrupted industrial production and dislocated supply chains everywhere, contributing to the anxiety that haunts many of us, especially among those who could not quarantine because they had to earn a living at-site. By contrast, those who could work off-site and earn from home, did so with smug satisfaction. Thus arose another divide between the haves and the have-nots that intensified appetites for false narratives about Covid, its nature and origins and, indeed, whether it is a real thing, undermining what governments and their public health experts were trying to do to keep us all safe. From that place, it was only a short hop for dissenters to jump on to the bandwagon that was headed for Ottawa, the Canadian capital, where they tried to ransom the city and the rest of the country. On their way, the agitators collected an assortment of antivaxxers and anti-maskers, racists and fascists, putschists and would-be assassins avowing, bizarrely, to kill the Prime Minister, topple the Federal Government and install an alternative that was more to their taste. Canada was headed for its January 6 moment.

The government was prepared. Using special powers, it eventually put an end to what was becoming a national embarrassment, and which had been seeding similar outbreaks elsewhere in the country. Social media had, once again, shown its power to spread false information and stoke up emotions.

The medium remains massively disruptive with that ability to disseminate false anti-science narratives about the pandemic (and other matters) that could have resulted in much worse clinical outcomes while, at the same time during 2022, enabling dissenters to collect and amass a substantial war chest. It is an irony that, quite possibly, escaped the convoy organizers and their followers: The weaponizing of the internet (and diesel-powered trucks) for the war against the very science that devised them.

Meanwhile, Covid’s economic fallout continues into the new year, taking the world to the brink amid forecasts that grow darker by the day.

The year twenty twenty-two also fuelled a couple of exotica, NFTs and cryptocurrency, to illustrate how easy it is for a fool and his money to be parted. As if to emphasize the point, the world’s richest man dropped $44bn lusting after a dysfunctional chat box.

“Loss and Damage” was the 2022 mantra that resounded from Sharm El Shaikh to all corners, as activists call on rich countries to foot the bill for the harm they continue inflict on the environment that threatens to take lives and destroy livelihoods everywhere, especially in poor countries. Yes, the survival of the world itself is at stake, with record high temperatures in many regions including in Europe and North America. The UK’s Met Office recently announced that 2022 was the hottest on record. In the Horn of Africa, drought was relentless, creating and sustaining a famished landscape throughout the region. On the other side, Pakistan and Nigeria drowned in unprecedented floods that displaced millions and killed thousands. The think tank, The Copernicus Climate Change Service, predicts that unless we change our ways, the world will warm up by 1.5 degrees by 2034, and the end will be nigh.

Unless Putin’s special operations does us in earlier.

Tell Fren Tru

Black Bodies And Original Sin

2020 has been a year-and-a-half, even though it is barely six months old. Does anyone remember that early January morning when it burst upon us with all the hype and noise about clear vision, and all that?  Some even suppressed, albeit momentarily, the persistent, deep ache induced by the virus-like sickness that had afflicted us for more than four centuries.

    But the year was not even a week old when reports of a new type of viral illness began to emerge from China. And, in no time at all, the new sickness, which was to be named COVID-19, corona virus disease 2019, had spread, and was continuing to do so, so rapidly, that the World Health Organization was forced to call the outbreak a  pandemic. Shortly following that declaration, many world leaders began the task of controlling the epidemic by curtailing economic and social activities within their territories and, subsequently, closing their borders to all but essential traffic.

         Sixteen weeks on, pandemic is front-and-centre in everyone’s mind, recognized around the world as the plague that is unravelling our modern way of life. As I write, nearly12 million  , distributed over 213 countries, have been infected by COVID-19, and more than half a million have died, economies have tumbled, and social orders rattled. We have had to re-define important aspects of our lives, and unexpected revelations about who or what is important have emerged. The term ‘essential’, as in essential worker, for example, has been clarified in sobering ways.  Essential workers, we now learn, are the workers required to be physically present, on location where, if they are not, the wheels that keep our societies turning grind to a halt. And, unsurprisingly, it is at these interfaces that the risk of catching COVID-19 is highest: We now realize that the essential worker is not just among obvious groups like doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers, EMTs or firefighters, policemen, and security guards, garbage collectors, but also includes people who keep our food and other supply lines intact (obvious as that should have been), workers who keep our transport networks rolling; supermarket checkouts, janitors, cleaners and, notably, the hitherto much under-valued personal service worker or PSW who, to our shame, we had accorded little respect. (We, unknowingly, shot ourselves in the foot here, as the number of vulnerable lives lost among care home residents reveals. That is a story that needs its own telling). These workers are the lifeblood of the economy not only in normal times, but as we now see, in times of trouble as well.

         What about those who are not among the category of the essential? The majority, unfortunately, have been laid off or sent on furlough. However, we are told that as many as 40% of the modern economy’s workforce have continued drawing their pay without leaving the house. These work from home (WFH) folks carry on their business, and/or that of their employer, striking keyboards and clicking mice, experiencing little inconvenience apart from having to change from their pyjamas into their day clothes, if that at all. But, however convenient their situation, their exertions have apparently not been enough to prevent the economy diving. Governments did what they had to do and provided emergency cash for the laid-off or furloughed. So, economic disaster has been staved off.

         Of course, viral pandemics come and go. They appear, suddenly, or, creep up upon us and cut their way through countries and regions, killing hundreds of thousands, or millions, until, eventually, they run out of potential victims, and allow survivors to breathe again. This is what pandemics do and have done for hundreds and perhaps, thousands of years. So, COVID-19 will go away too, sooner or, as some fear, later.

         But, this time, there has been a confluence that has resulted in totally predictable consequences. COVID-19 targets, with unerring focus, the group that have been, and continue to be, the victims of that other virus-like disorder, the one that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, and which has been a stain on humanity for centuries; it is the only virus that has remained resolutely out of control and resistant to all forms of therapy, presumably because it is an affliction of mind rather than one of body. And so, the moment arrives, when COVID-19 meets racism, on the bodies of Black people. The results have been devastating but unsurprising. All the factors contributing to this shameful outcome stem directly from anti-Black racism: having to work in essential fields, inconsistent access to health care, chronic health conditions, the societal stress of being Black and its adverse effects on the immune system are laid bare in this analysis and is the result of what is often called America’s original sin. That sin was in public display when the life was squeezed out of Black George Floyd by a White policeman. America must exorcise this sin, or its presumed leadership of the world would slip into the hands of others. That, perhaps, might not be such a bad idea.

Tell Fren Tru