Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Pandemic

In Wuhan wet markets the first transgression occurred: the virus was transmitted from animal to human being. From there the virus spread, latching onto the endless hustle and bustle of people coming in and out of this locale of commerce, passing from human to human in the city, penetrating into homes and families, flying past mountains and oceans guided by the frenzied free-flow of global commerce.
​
A quarantine was ordered in Wuhan on January 23 at 10:00am CST. It marked the first coordinated effort to cut off the viral flow of movement. But it was too late. Less than 100 days after the initial attempt, here I am, halfway across the world, imprisoned in my home for the several months as are a billion other people all around the world.

I have barely stepped outside the threshold of my home. While familiar interior spaces promise safety and cleanliness, external spaces are like enemy territory. I imagine invisible coronavirus molecules floating about, carried hither and thither by the breeze. Outside, there is always the potential to be contaminated. From inside I regard those outside, even close neighbours and familiar faces, with a measure of suspicion. I picture noxious fumes escaping their mouths. Have they been contaminated?

As long as I can control what enters through the threshold—the doorway—I am able to maintain the purity and safety of my sanctuary, my home. I received a book ordered from Amazon today. As I gingerly extract the package with the tips of my fingers, I feel coronavirus particles invading—the tips of my fingers have been soiled. I leave the packaging outside and make sure to wash my hands, soaping and lathering them for at least 15 seconds as prescribed. I wipe down the book with Lysol. Purity and order are restored.

A single left-click on my mouse has activated criss-crossing global logistics systems. This is what I picture in my mind’s eye. In a non-descript bookstore in Japan the book is selected by an anonymous pair of hands and sent to the post office, where it is packaged by another pair of hands. Another person loads it for the long journey across the Pacific by boat, where it arrives at the Amazon fulfillment centre somewhere in America. An American worker picks up the package and sends it off to the postal office in Canada, where it is received by Canadian hands. It is then given to the postal worker who dropped it into the mailbox just a moment prior. I’ve heard that COVID-19 can live for three days on delivery packages. How many has this package infected?

In Canada, individuals are asked to practice “social distancing.” We have our own hygienic bubble two metres in radius. Couples are kept separate from trading pleasures; friends kept away from convivial exchanges at a dinner table, where they swap ideas and micro-droplets. Micro-droplets—now the invisible menace—are a natural result of conversation and interaction. In the name of social distancing, we lose our great public spaces, the commons where a microcosm of society gathers, and micro-droplets of citizens separated by class, race, and other demographic divisions are passed around from the rich to the poor and the poor to the rich. Through micro-droplets people achieve a common understanding, and through micro-droplets society emerges. Without public spaces we lose this intimate and fertile exchange, and we are left with sterile, mediated images of others that only seem to confirm our suspicions. Instead, we log onto online locales—these are sanitary spaces without micro-droplets. In these online echo chambers, we retreat into the safety of our personalized tribes.

There is a transgressive fluidity in contemporary globalized society that disregards boundaries. Globalization encourages the movement of capital, goods, and services across borders and the movement of labour follows. Dislocated individuals drift around from country to country, from megacity to megacity, where they dissolve into the masses.

Contagion-wary nation-states have responded with borders and have canceled international flights and prohibited the entry of foreign nationals. Formerly intimate trade relationships are left cold, and complex global supply chains are starting to be repatriated. Global commerce dries to a trickle: the transfusion of trade across national borders has slowed. In these new relations of commerce, the commodity is no longer the birthchild of an orgy, where raw materials from Chile and Canada are transported to China and Korea for parts development and finally assembled in Italy to be sold in the American consumer. These new commodities bear the mark of national purity and are made by the trustworthy hands of the co-national.

As mutual transactions of commerce slow down between nations, a perverse competition emerges in its stead: these are the mounting tallies of new coronavirus cases and new deaths. National media outlets compare these numbers like the performances of athletes in the Olympics. These numbers are risk assessments against the foreigner. Citizens learn how dangerous “they” are.
 
This is only the first wave of coronavirus; most of the world has gone under lockdown for just over a month. We can expect a second round, a third round, and maybe even a fourth—this state of affairs may become the new normal for the next few years until a vaccine is discovered.

As this happens, we will withdraw into the safety of our clean, interior spaces and jealously guard the threshold from the menacing “others” on the outside. Our old relational habits will be replaced by a new culture: a culture of separation, excessive hygiene (both bodily and in our ideas), and purity.