It is been a month since quarantine officially started in Portugal where I am writing this text. But irrelevant of location, the current pandemic is a global problem and one that will give us more questions than answers in all areas of life. Here are five different realities we must rethink as civilization.
1. Mother Nature Reigns Supreme
Despite the apparent Homo Sapiens dominance as a species we are still very vulnerable to our environment, something we presumed to have conquered long ago. In an age where existential threats were thought to come from within Humanity itself, such as nuclear wars, evil artificial intelligence or global warming, Nature reminds us that we are only her children. It is just the kind of threat that has changed. Instead of worrying about large predators and extreme climate conditions, we are now concerned about tiny invisible beings happily living in our comfortable homes.
We are victims of our own success, specifically of successful globalization. Slowly but surely, our civilization is becoming more homogenous, culturally, and biologically. While this may lead to powerful societies it makes us more vulnerable to risk. Before, a virus could wipe a population and it would not likely spread far beyond its outbreak. Today, it can quickly go anywhere thanks to air travel.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link – it only takes one miscalculation, one irresponsible leader or one accident to create an international calamity. Risk management in a globalized world is too fat tailed. In other words, rewards are reaped by a small percentage of the total population in a winner takes all model (inequality), while punishment is shared between all members with extinction being a realistic possibility.
We Are the Virus
If you look at any type of system, you will notice that there are always limits to growth. The world economy can only grow so much before it starts to damage the environment it depends on. Or the case of Yellowstone, where without wolves, elk became too abundant and provoked a cascade of change in the environment greatly reducing biodiversity. And, luckily for us, viruses also have their limits. In the case of the new corona it is estimated to be at 60% of human infection where it will then stabilize (assuming we know all of the virus effects).
But there is another way to look at this: corona is a reaction to another virus – Humans. It is Nature’s way of population control. And if a virus will not make us learn, something else will. She is ever resourceful and there are infinite ways to which we can be controlled. We must collectively understand that the more we prolong our current behaviour, the more extreme these limits to growth reactions will happen. In a strange way we are lucky. What if it was another virus that was as deadly as Ebola and as contagious as corona?
We are Nature’s own virus to be contained and we should be concerned. Not in the way environmentalists would tell you to. I do not worry about the survival of other living beings and natural ecosystems, that would be the epitome of human arrogance. They will survive one way or another. What I do worry about is Nature’s wrath against us and I see covid-19 as a serious warning.
2. The Financial System Is Failing Us
As of now, most businesses are stopped, and people are rightfully panicking. Rents have to be paid and food needs to be put on the table. As a result, central banks and politicians are injecting more money into the economy to stimulate spending and keep it going.
Growth is the name of the game and more is always the answer. That is what society will tell you. Are you unhappy? More money will solve that. Are you not being successful? That is because you need to work harder. Is the economy in shambles? GDP growth is the obvious solution. The system is like an addict that is always hungry and never satisfied. It wants more for the sake of it. Growth is no longer a means to make our lives better but an end itself. Even Simon Kuznets, creator of GDP, warned the US Congress saying, “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.”
This is an economic crisis as it is a philosophic one. Do we want to depend on unsustainable growth and artificial manipulation of systems we do not understand for our livelihood? Economists, bankers, and politicians do not know how it works, not because they are stupid or ignorant, but because it is impossible to understand the levels of complexity seen in the world’s economy. However, one does not need to fully understand it to realize that it does not function, despite what ‘experts’ say. John Maynard Keynes, the founder of macroeconomics and a mathematician himself, included few formulas in his theories as he knew reality could not be fully translated into mathematical models. Ultimately, all measures implemented are based on trickled down economics hoping that people will follow incentives/disincentives.
The Economy is More Fragile Than We Would Like to Admit
Do you wonder why the economy pauses for a month and we already estimate years of struggle until we are back to the same levels? A big reason for this fragility is irresponsible debt.
Credit can be a wonderful thing. The word itself means honour and trust. Ideally, it allows a better allocation of resources. Those who do not have the money but have the skills/time can create or buy things otherwise impossible; and those who have money can put it to greater use. The problem arises when both creditors and debtors irresponsibly transact with each other. This was what triggered the 2008 depression.
Unused cash is costly. Thanks to inflation a dollar today is less valuable than a dollar in a year’s time. Banks and companies that have spare money are encouraged to borrow or invest it. But taken to an extreme, these entities take on too much risk and if unlikely events happen, which sooner or later will, their whole financial health is destroyed. If it were just a few of these to engage in hazardous behaviour the system would hold and eliminate them. But if everyone is irresponsible, these banks and corporations realize they become too big to fail. If they go down, everyone else will. In the end, tax-payer money will be used to save them. To add insult to injury, these same people will not be punished accordingly, on the contrary, you will see them in similar position of power.
Our economy’s fragility is exacerbated by overspecialization. Adam Smith taught us that if we have a relative advantage over a country in producing a certain good, we are better off to produce only that good for more economic gain. However, too much of it means that I rely on my economic partners for basic needs. If they have a crisis, I will have a crisis too – the chain principle again. For example, the current crisis on medical masks reflects this. By buying local, even though it might be more expensive, you are not only boosting your community’s economy but making it more robust against a global shortage.
Because growth is deemed essential, there is no encouragement to have a buffer or save money. It is common for companies that have a few months of cash-flow to engage in speculative credit, including stock buyback. If we do the math, we quickly realize it takes a month of zero revenue to erase several months of healthy profits. As a result, it takes one crisis to erase years of gains.
Fiat Currencies and Inequality: You Are Getting Poorer Despite How Hard You Work
This pandemic exposes another ugly truth. When the economy is in crisis, one of central bank’s duties is to promote spending by encouraging lending. They can create new money to make this happen know as quantitative easing. Assuming everything goes as planned, the economy will slowly go back to business as usual. However, there are now trillions of extra dollars in circulation and your salary saw little to no variation, so in fact you are relatively poorer, if you still have a job that is. But those who own the assets such as real estate or essential goods businesses, the already rich who do not depend on a wage, saw their value go up. In times of need, you do not care as much about money as you care about food and a bed to sleep on.
People who execute these measures argue their necessity despite not being perfect. A counterargument relates to how these decisions are implemented. Regarding newly created money, it matters who and when it is received. Big businesses and banks are the ones to directly secure it, the justification being they have the most power to put it to greater good. Banks can lend to entrepreneurs and big businesses help create and maintain employment. But what really happens is that the majority of that money will be used to purchase financial assets in a self-preservation move. This gets worse considering a disproportionate amount of the stock market is already owned by the wealthy. What is actually left of that money (a small percentage) will be used in the real economy.
There is, however, a deeper root in the inequality witnessed in the world’s economy – interest. It is the reason the business of money exists, known as banks. If I have 10$ and lend you at 10% interest to be paid at the end of the year, I will gain 1$. If you need more money, you might go to the bank and borrow 100$ at 5% interest. Doing the same calculations, the bank will profit 5 times more despite half the interest because the initial amount was higher. That is how most new money is created. If I keep doing this for an exceptionally long period of time, usually generations, the initial 90$ difference will become exponentially higher and I will never be able to catch up to the bank. Each year the gap widens. Inequality is inherently built in the way money is created. While some of it is necessary, too much of it leads to instability and unfairness.
This basic principle happens at all levels of the economy: from poor countries slaves to debt, to individual citizens who will never be as financially successful as their richer counterparts. Merit, skill, and competence become secondary – you potentially lost the game even before you played it unless you get lucky or become world class at what you do. This is the reason you see companies or banks become too big to fail despite their glaring incompetence. Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule, but these are few and far between. And those same outliers are paved to become what they previously dethrone, perpetuating the cycle.
3. Doctors Are Trained to Save People Not Populations
Lately, I have developed somewhat of a morbid habit: every lunch I check the number of deaths due to corona virus. The first few thousands where concerning but now they feel like any other number. If I turn on the news, the story of the young and healthy adult that died touches me but the news that another thousand died somewhere does not affect me as much. At what point does death transform from a tragedy into a cold statistic? Is there a magic number?
In Western civilization, where Christianity and liberalism are prevalent, there are two thing we value above everything else – human life is the greatest of gifts, and we are all equal before God or the Law. That is also the basis of our healthcare system: everyone deserves to live, and it is the doctor’s duty to make sure his patient does so.
The issue is that measures to save a life and many lives are different and can be at odds with each other. Let us travel to a different reality and suppose you are a doctor from the future who knows all about covid-19. You receive a call from a patient that feels really sick and go to his apartment where he lives by himself. You immediately recognize this is patient zero. Two options are on the table:
- Take him to the hospital and save his life with the risk of starting a pandemic or;
- Tell him it is only a normal flu and he should not leave the house. You let him die preventing the outbreak.
What would you do? It is easy to say “let him die” because you are from the future and do not know the patient personally. But you, as the doctor, will be held responsible for his death and put your reputation and job at risk, while nobody will give you credit for preventing a pandemic (we recognize problem solvers while ignoring those who avoid them). If you choose to save patient zero however, you will have to live with yourself knowing that you have indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Doctors may be forced to deal with moral dilemmas like this one, perhaps not on the same level of consequences but just as emotionally draining. Doctors in Italy had to decide who was to live or die because of the limited number of ventilators. Saving lives is already hard enough, choosing who is to make it through makes the job overwhelming. There are many ways to prevent and control a pandemic and putting that burden on doctors is irresponsible. The knowledge and skills required for such duties are different than what medical professionals have been trained for. A doctor should not be in charge of giving public advice on these matters, nor should they have to risk their lives when treating infected patients from preventable epidemics. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
4. The Perfect Excuse to Watch Us: Data and Privacy Issues
With the threat of a highly contagious virus everyone has a role to play in protecting themselves and protecting others. We naturally judge others. For example, when going to the supermarket, you notice who is wearing a mask and who is not. You notice how far the person waiting behind you is. You notice every cough and every sneeze. There never has been this much fear in such mundane tasks.
It is usually accepted that “my liberty ends where yours begins.” But the new corona virus has twisted our notion of personal freedom. What previously was harmless is now a danger to myself and those physically close to me. It begs the question if there should be more citizen control on the basis of public safety. If so, how is this control to be executed? How is that information protected? How do I assure it is relinquished after the crisis is over?
Suppose this scenario: your government makes the announcement that anyone can download an official app on their smartphones that will track your location at all times on the justification that it will allow a better border state control. With the caveat that it is not compulsory. If you get caught leaving your state through the app, you will be told by police officers to go back but will not be penalised.
Those who willingly download the app do so because they feel it is their duty towards their fellow citizens and country. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to as they would be exposing them to unnecessary danger. On the other hand, others would vehemently refuse to install it saying that the government has no right tracking their movements. Even if not obligatory, that will create an extremely dangerous precedent that will undermine personal freedom. Furthermore, if this becomes the norm, those who do not download the app may be looked down upon as irresponsible making the non-obligatory clause irrelevant. However, the majority would be in neither camp. They would probably not care and may or may not register depending on their moods. If you doubt this, just check the levels of abstention on every democracy. Here lies the real danger.
Democracy and liberalism were not built on indifference. In fact, it is its biggest enemy. Irrelevant of side chosen, the information gathered by the app is sensible and private. If a country agrees to collectively download it, chances are that that information is heavily regulated, well protected and used for its only purpose – public health. On the opposite side, by a shared opposition of that app, that information will never be gathered in the first place and public health will be a personal duty of all and not the state. The best path may be argued, but what is clear is that that type of information is critical.
This is a hypothetical scenario, but this covert war is going on every day, usually under the disguise of ‘Free’. A good rule of thumb is every time you use a service for free, you and your data are the products. Most notorious examples are Google and Facebook whose mains revenue is advertising. They sell your demographics, habits, time sessions and clicks to companies who then determine if you are a prospect worth targeting for. We ought to ask ourselves if these companies should gather our data and use it for their economic benefit. That decision is ours to take, not institutions or companies under the banner of public safety and better service.
5. Media Is Our Best Ally and Worst Enemy
If there is one thing I learned during this pandemic is that everyone is a virologist or epidemiologist. Under normal circumstances this fact would be irrelevant, but these are not normal circumstances. What people with authority or reputable mediums disseminate is likely to be taken at face value and followed. Therefore, information has to be carefully selected. That is the chief goal of the media.
Good and Bad Examples
Despite losing market share, television is still the most trusted source of information for most people. And during quarantine, I have seen useful news and interviews mixed with filler or junk content that does more harm than good. A good example would be interviews with actual epidemiologists. Those that I have watched gave educated advice and were not afraid of saying “I don’t know” or “That isn’t my responsibility to answer” when asked what should be done.
Unfortunately, the opposite happens too. Clickbait titles or journalistic reports whose result is only spreading unnecessary panic are irresponsible. People are not so much interested in recovery cases as they are in deaths. That is how we are wired to think in order to alert us from danger, and the media takes advantage of that. There are also damaging examples connotated as positive news. For example, few days ago I saw in the Portuguese television the news that the peak of the epidemic may have already been surpassed. May have. The only thing that report does is making the listeners relax their quarantine and possibly spread the virus again making the news, otherwise true, false.
Statistics
There is something about statistics that is very counter intuitive to humans. We evolved by overreacting to danger not by thinking in probabilities but in possible outcomes. It is not about seeing the truth but about seeing the environment in a way that increase our chance of survival. That is why you may know people that play the lottery (<0.01% of winning) but refuse to fly (>99.9% of survival). Statistically this is irrational but common sense says otherwise. Playing the lotter may be considered a waste of time and money, but the losses compared to the gains are irrelevant, so people do it. Flying, on the other hand, involves the risk of dying – the ultimate price to pay – so if there is even a ridiculously small % of dying, people will overreact to it.
The point is that with statistics there is not a middle ground. Either you know statistics and can infer the right conclusion from data, or you are better off trusting your common sense. Lately, the media has been full of numbers and data that does not mean a thing and may lead you to the wrong conclusions. Another local example: there was this victorious report saying that for the first time since the outbreak in the country started, the number of recovered patients was superior to the number of deaths. If I told you this out of context, you would likely assume that the death rate is close to 50% but that is far from the truth. The media has an important role to play in this pandemic and should be scrutinized accordingly.
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