The spectre of a plague roams free, reducing society to panic stricken desperation, and lungs to reservoirs of liquid ruin. Capricious in its action, the pestilence picks off both the vulnerable and those that care for them. Originating where most other plagues first initiated their deadly assault, this microbe has ridden from east to west not on the backs of camels, hidden in bags of spices, but through the medium of instant business and leisure travel. It knows the advantage of speed. Rapid transit has allowed it to multiply before the massed ranks of modern medicine even knew it existed.
With no weapons bar palliation, society is reduced to a legion of individual plague villages. Dwellings, villages, towns, cities and whole countries barred against incomers. Medieval strategies initiated to fight an age-old enemy. No venerated science to save us here. Avoid the plague if you can, lest you be one of the unlucky ones.
What should people do? Which raft should they board? Adrift in this bubonic sea, there are of course no rafts, save to remain on the stricken ship, barring all contact with those that may carry the pestilence into our homes. Woe betide those that venture out beyond a narrow perimeter, carrying disease into an unwelcoming society. And woe betide more, those of a different colour or creed, those with fewer economic or cultural resources. The pestilence glows brighter on these outsiders, guilty by racial association or lack of capacity.
The press is consumed with arguments about tests, machines and coveralls, bringing anger and hope to desperate people in equal measure. Who to blame? Daily news outlets dream up ever more extreme stories. But there is only one story. Plague is abroad! People are dying! Bar your doors!
In a desperate search for succour, people fix on demonstrations of community clapping, whilst the carers they salute succumb to the effects of a decade of economic privation. A desperate belief in leaders sustains hope over despair, despite these same leaders having presided over the gathering storm, having fed the circumstances that now give the microbe all that it needs to flourish. And kill.
And kill it does. People, jobs, industries and whole economies fall over, breathing their last. A way of existing, a way of being, a way of living, no longer the invulnerable orthodoxy we thought it was. Having destroyed alternative ways of organising society – systems that stressed cooperation – the world order finds itself lost. Grabbing at unfamiliar and hated mechanisms of central control. Whilst some ham-fistedly dust off the memories of a different collaborative world, other authoritarian and erratic leaders take the opportunity to impose iron willed control.
Desperate to reignite the established order of things, these leaders now look to release us from our locked and barred accommodations. Workers need to work to feed the economic beast. Growth must be resumed. And resumed rapidly. The world from which this virus came must be re-tamed anew. Dominated as if there is nothing else lurking in the undergrowth and natural laboratories of flora and fauna that we live among.
Those of us who ask, will this not kill more people, will be brushed aside. The message of saving our health services, which has been relentlessly driven home, will be emphasised more. A health service to be saved, not the people for whom it cares, as their lungs fill with deadly fluid. As they die.
The coming strategy is to resuscitate the world economy whilst health services manage the casualties. Balancing the freedom to mingle freely with the ability of health services to take care of the economic revival’s collateral damage.
And the people believe this to be good. The messages are so ingrained now, the applause and donations a part of who we are, that to advance the idea of health services as economic casualty stations is derided. But that is what they are about to become. The virus is not going away, will live with us, mixing with us in our workplaces, shops and offices. Testing and tracing means finding casualties. Casualties, some of whom will die.
Leaders throughout the world have carelessly used the language of war to exhort efforts from their populations. Wars bring privation, deprivation and devastation. They bring casualties. To use the same metaphor, the initial defensive battle is nearly over. The long campaign to reclaim lost ground is now upon us.
Successful commanders know their objectives before they advance. What are ours? They know how much effort their combatants will tolerate. What will we accept? They know the price of waging campaigns. What is an acceptable cost for our economic revival? Most of all, they know the rate of casualties that they, their armies and their people will tolerate. What casualty rate will we accept?
