The danger of nuclear war is by no means a thing of the past, and yet even if our fears were not continuously focused on Covid-19, it is probably true to say that we might not worry about nuclear weapons every week, let alone all the time. Recently, in a period of dangerous tensions between the US and China, of advancing ecocide and systemic social inequality exacerbated by new mass unemployment, a time too in which human rights and the freedom of speech are under threat, it has been the state of the economy and the effetti del cattivo governo (as Ambrogio Lorenzetti called the “effects of bad government” in his allegorical painting), that have vied with Covid for our attention. The first of these concerns, essentially the question of how people, often with very limited resources at their disposal, are going to make ends meet, comes disguised by the “nuclear” metaphor of “economic fallout” (i.e. from Covid), while the second is frequently euphemised under the heading “management” (i.e. the government’s mishandling of Covid-related contingencies and measures). Nothing, certainly not language, escapes the bug.
It would therefore seem obvious that Covid, given the immense suffering it has caused and economic headaches it may give us for some time to come, is the universal anxiety and scourge of the present times, equivalent in some way to “yesterday’s” nuclear threat.
Nonetheless there are considerable differences. Hopes based on a universally accessible vaccine and, even less likely under present “management”, structural investment for long-term recovery, bring into partial view the prospect of a less uncertain future, an option not available in the 1941 or 1981 scenarios. By contrast, we do not have a quick-fix for the elephant in the room: the climate crisis. And even as hope rises and millions crave a return to the “before times”, we everywhere notice the inequalities and injustices of the normality we wish to reclaim. Yes, science and pharmaceutical companies have combined resources to find a vaccine for an illness affecting many in the wealthiest countries. Meanwhile more than 200 million people, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, are infected every year by malaria, killing 800 children every day. According to WHO, Covid-related interruptions to treatment may lead to a doubling of this death rate.
This piece was originally published in the Splinters December edition .