It hasn’t mattered how sick they’ve been, or how much they’ve suffered.Īt least not until now - because now, in the era of the virus, a poor person’s sickness can affect a wealthy society’s health. Who doesn’t remember the videos of “patient dumping” - sick people, still in their hospital gowns, butt naked, being surreptitiously dumped on street corners? Hospital doors have too often been closed to the less fortunate citizens of the US. It is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years. The tragedy is immediate, real, epic and unfolding before our eyes. And we think to ourselves, “My God! This is America!” About states being forced to bid against each other for ventilators, about doctors’ dilemmas over which patient should get one and which left to die. We follow the statistics, and hear the stories of overwhelmed hospitals in the US, of underpaid, overworked nurses having to make masks out of garbage bin liners and old raincoats, risking everything to bring succour to the sick. Night after night, from halfway across the world, some of us watch the New York governor’s press briefings with a fascination that is hard to explain. But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage? Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus at a White House briefing on April 1, as the number of US cases topped 200,000 © AP/Alex Brandon Narendra Modi with the US president and his wife Melania at a packed rally in Ahmedabad on February 24 - part of a lavish official visit © eyevine They don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally. The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest - thus far - in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade and international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake has locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes.īut unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of thousands, perhaps more. More than 50,000 people have died already. The number of cases worldwide this week crept over a million. ![]() Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not - secretly, at least - submitting to science?Īnd even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies? Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more - a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables - without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest - delivered directly to your inbox.
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