The corona virus pandemic has brought home in a big way the lesson that with globalisation, frontiers have lost all effectiveness in defending people.
To be sure, when in the past epidemics spread, they too rolled across nations. As has been repeatedly said, germs need no passport to enter countries. They did so since ancient times...
The difference this time is in the speed with which the virus has travelled to all continents. Especially in Europe, this has reinforced the need inside all frontiers for health services to be established all having the same high standards in the delivery of protection and medical treatment systems. That’s the only way by which to ensure that measures undertaken to control rampant disease extend equivalent levels of protection to all.
It is obvious that for certain countries, this will mean a greater commitment and greater expenditures to improve their health systems. If this is not done, given that globalisation and the establishment of the single European market have reached their current stage of development, the protection that can be offered against the onset of an epidemic like corona virus will only be as effective as the weakest link in the protective chain.
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STRANGE TIMES
We are living through days in which feelings of strangeness about what is happening are palpable: we face an overriding problem that is unprecedented and that affects one and all.
I do not think that there’s anyone alive today who can somehow remember times of plague. Certainly, periods occurred when polio or cholera and even influenza were experienced as massive medical threats, not to mention AIDS. But never were such threats so widespread to the extent that millions could be affected.
The belief that older people are more likely to die as a result seems to have led some to the assumption they could ignore public health instructions, thereby multiplying risks for themselves and those close to them.
Similar behaviour patterns used to emerge at times of acute plague in a not so distant past: as all are in danger of getting the sickness – so people would then say – why should we stay glum in the few days still left to us to live? Is it not better to go out and enjoy ourselves?
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NOVELS THAT...
Along with some friends I found myself playing a “literary” game by e mail, in which one had to name novels which featured a plague or epidemic that was running uncontrolled. Bocaccio’s Decameron was excluded right from the start as it is such an obvious pick.
Among the titles that came up: Danie Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi, Ġuże Cardona’s Żmien il-Qerda, Harrison Ainsworth’s Old St Paul’s, Albert Camus’ La Peste...
One could play the same game about films which feature the theme of some spreading disease. Exclude though film adaptations of your original pick of novels. The farthest I could go along this route was “The Seventh Seal” but no doubt there are many more titles.