A pandemic that has been overcome, just like a pandemic that has only begun, causes an obsessive desire to forget its existence. Nevertheless, the lessons of COVID-19 should remain in our memory – primarily because they have not lost their relevance at all, Kirill Telin writes.
The coronavirus pandemic has had many consequences – perhaps even too many to be presented in a short summary. However, if we set the task of characterising the key political consequences of COVID-19, perhaps we can do it using the following six points.
1. The pandemic has revealed the psychological tension accumulated over the previous years, associated with both the mass dissatisfaction of people with the world in which they live, and with the incredible pace of change that is happening around them, at least in the field of information and communication. People were already puzzled by the uncertainty of their future, which contrasted so vividly with the predictability and even stagnation of the past; but then, at some point, the entire new-fangled and extremely fast-paced global innovation machine, whose passengers were sometimes not so much the silent, but the unheard majority, suddenly slowed down, “paused” – and modern man is generally unfamiliar with, and certainly not very happy about waiting. When even things that had become completely familiar – a walk, a trip to work, a trip to the store – suddenly became inaccessible to already-dissatisfied people, the cup of patience overflowed. Waves of protests against vaccination and rallies against QR codes swept across completely different countries.
2. No matter how much the supporters of realism and the inviolability of the statist order claim that the pandemic has shown the extreme importance of the classical state in solving global problems, it is important to emphasize that at the same time, COVID-19 led to discontent with the very same “brave old world” – with its arrogant governments, with its imperativeness, with its asymmetry and the desire to compare who is stronger and able to assert their sovereignty, no matter how many victims have to be brought to this altar. Some political scientists point out that since the onset of the pandemic, incumbent governments have fallen in 40 out of 54 elections in “Western democracies” – an alarming, but very characteristic sign. In other words, people could turn to the state for help because they saw no alternative source for such help, but they also retained the right to remain quite dissatisfied with the way they were helped. Such is, if you like, the fate of a monopolist.
3. The pandemic left unresolved problems of duplicity, hypocrisy and mistrust, which were significant from more than just a personal perspective. Many governments, loyal “committed intellectuals”, and various experts managed to pile up thick palisades of lies during the first months of the pandemic. Donald Trump demonstratively neglected quarantine measures; Alexander Lukashenko recommended dowsing the coronavirus with vodka; in May 2020, almost a quarter of Russians were convinced that “there is no COVID-19 epidemic and this is an invention of interested parties.” The result of the contradictory and inconsistent reaction, which progressed from the position of “there is no threat” to the rhetoric of “we have everything under control” directly to isolation and vaccination, did more than simple reinforce mistrust between society and the authorities in many developed and developing countries. The result of this reaction probably increased the number of victims: let us recall that in the United States alone there are more than a million victims of the pandemic (imagine if a city like Dallas completely disappeared from the world map); 700 thousand in Brazil, more than half a million in India, and about 400 thousand in Russia (imagine if the city Tver disappeared).
4. A few years ago, William Davies of the University of London (formerly Goldsmiths College) put forward the concept that modern polities have become “nervous states” – systems in a state of constant anxiety, fear, anticipation of conflict and imminent suffering. Therefore, the response to a truly large-scale challenge performed by such “nervous” systems turns out to be inadequate, disproportionate and, sometimes, simply belated: governments imposed lockdowns, then lifted them, then returned them again; they announced the miraculous results of vaccines, then suspended their use. An anxious and irrational person, as we know, can prepare for a threat that he will never face, but find himself completely unarmed in the face of a risk about which he has been repeatedly warned.
5. It is worth noting with regret that the pandemic has apparently finally destroyed the faith of a significant number of people in the rationality of the world around them – and, it is worth noting separately, their faith in the magical capabilitites of science, and in its efficiency and power. During the coronavirus, miracles were expected from scientists – and, as almost always happens, such a miracle was not forthcoming; scientists are not wizards, and they do not even learn from them. Science can work effectively, but it will definitely take a long time to prepare for this; politicians and government officials are prone to make mistakes to the same extent as mere mortals. Doctors can disagree on professional issues – all these revelations have become almost like the discovery of America for a significant number of people who encountered COVID-19.
6. Last but not least, the lessons of the pandemic are in how its consequences were understood and interpreted. For many politicians, COVID-19 turned out to be not only and not so much a challenge as a crisis narrative, which, when used correctly, can become a powerful tool for consolidation around one force or another. Do you want to lead the government? Stimulate moral panic about bureaucrats or migrants. Do you want new powers? Initiate conversations about the crisis of the constitutional order. This is how political scientists Colin Hay and Eric Jones described the crisis: according to their colleague Paul Hart, “language is the most important tool for crisis management. Those who can define the crisis will be able to imagine strategies for resolving it.” Moreover, governments, the opposition, and even conspiracy theorists have tried to use COVID-19 in the form of such a “induced narrative”: the thesis “let us unite around the only truth” has proven extremely attractive in a nervous and restless era.
