Endemic Game — the Fall of the Global Community?
On the 24th of March 2022, it is expected that the UK (or at least England) will let all legal enforcements surrounding Covid-19 expire. Just to put this into context; by “all legal enforcements” we are not simply talking about facemasks on buses, working from home recommendations, or lateral flows tests for nightclubs. We’re talking about the end of any requirement to even isolate if you test positive for Covid-19. The virus will officially be given licence to let rip and in practice, after this date, the UK will not acknowledge covid-19 as anything more than just another respiratory infection. In the eyes of some, this is huge. In the eyes of others this is utterly, utterly insane…but huge nonetheless.
In fairness, despite going through an existential political crisis riddled with sleaze and nativist rhetoric; the UK isn’t doing too badly in its current pandemic position. Disastrous decisions have been made, but as things stand the overwhelming majority of adult citizens have received vaccination against Covid-19. Also, a large spike in infections during the Omicron wave did not see the same spike in deaths that occurred the previous winter. Sports stadiums are full, nightclubs are open and for much of the population; soaring energy prices have become much more of a daily grumble than the latest lockdown measures.
This could all change in the blink of an eye should a new doomsday variant rear its head, but for now the UK appears to be hurtling towards pre covid normality at a fairly reasonable pace.
Except that, it isn’t. It really really isn’t. And here’s why.
As an island nation, a degree of isolationist thinking has perhaps always been apparent in the UK. But the UK is also the 5th largest economy on the planet, so being able to freely travel for both business and leisure has also been very much part of the national DNA. For many in the UK, the cheap international holiday or a visit to relatives living internationally is the cornerstone of everyday life. So how does that actually work now? How does team: “learn to live with the virus” coordinate with team: “Covid Zero?”
Quick frankly it doesn’t. One undeniable reality of the varying pace and ideological views on how to handle Covid-19 is that we are all living in very different landscapes around the globe. And there is no immediate indication that these landscapes will sync up. Back in the summer of 2020 for many Brits and Americans alike, it was quite jarring to see images on TV of “fortress Australia.” While Lockdowns in the UK and US remained mostly strict, images of Australians dining out, and attending mass events with full stadiums were surreal to anyone living in the geographical West. There was jealousy from many younger Brits, as young Australians lived out their lives like none of this was even happening. However, the reality of fortress Australia is that it could never truly beat Covid-19 unless it committed to closing its borders forever. It was simply buying itself time before the inevitable. Eventually, over time that jealousy traded places, and the same younger Australians who lived in their national and state bubbles yearned for the world they were restricted from. An interconnectivity and shared experience across affluent nations was severed. Fortress Australia was a safe haven in the eyes of some but an Aussie Alcatraz in the eyes of others. Despite the undeniable merits of protecting so many people; as a global community, we had never felt further apart in culture and in experience.
These are of course first world pandemic problems. As tough as this all was, for most of us living in rich nations we had access to social safety nets, furlough schemes, and the ability to protect ourselves via way of vaccination if we so wished. But the reality was very different for those in the developing world. For various reasons the vaccination rate across Africa is 8% compared to a global average of 53%, meaning that the risk of severe disease and death from Covid-19 is higher for many within the continent. Hospitals are potentially under greater pressure, meaning lockdowns are still very much a risk and a world free from any covid-19 restrictions remains some way off for much of the developing world. The West may race to a new revolutionary normal, where we work remotely, boost our immunity anytime we choose, and futureproof ourselves against novel viruses. But the rest of the world, which we claim to be global citizens of, still finds itself with very few additional tools than it had in March of 2020. America First, Brexit or whatever nationalistic rhetoric that grew popular in the post-truth political arena of 2016; has never had more fertile soil.
Of course, pre-Covid-19 we knew global societies to be very different, we knew global disparity to be very real. But now we are facing the prospect that the social nature of life may vary so greatly from nation to nation that any resemblance of a shared human experience could be lost. How do we navigate a world wherein one society wearing a face covering is a polite request, and another a mandatory requirement where non-compliance is punishable by prison? How do we navigate through a world wherein one society a vaccine is either readily available in every clinic, or another reserved for a highly selective group?
As it stands, we are all living in parallel universes moving at different speeds with very different rules and consequences. Jumping on a plane may soon feel as though we are entering a multiverse where other versions of people that were once quite like us believe very different things and are triggered by very different circumstances.
Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan was quite correct in 1962 when theorising a global village of the future that was interconnected by media technology, transnational commerce, and migration. We’ve lived that way for a good two decades now, whether we like it or not. But what Marshall McLuhan could not have foreseen is how a global pandemic may reset the clock. How this novel virus could stop dead the notion of a shared experience and slam shut the physical connectivity that air travel provided for many.
There’s really only one way out of this multiverse we’re faced with now and that’s to accept that no country will ever be at an endemic stage until the entire world is. Our nationalistic hoarding mentality is Covid 19’s greatest strength. The fact that a rich nation like the UK has enough of a supply to vaccinate every person in the country almost 7 times over, and yet only 2.6 percent of Nigeria has been vaccinated, is why we will continue to see mutations and lockdowns. There simply cannot be a new normal for any of us, until there is one for all of us. Until we reach that point we will continue to drift further part as an international community with parallel rules for parallel lives.
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