Timidly, humans begin to look out toward the streets. The most terrible days of the fear, tribulation, anguish, and mourning wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus appear to be behind us. As I write this article, the "official" global figures count almost 3.5 million people infected—suffering in the most absolute solitude, a million more who have recovered, and 250,000 who died alone, anonymous, without mourners or the rites of funerals.
All humanity has lived through an unusual and unprecedented situation of closing ourselves in, compulsory seclusion, confinement on a global level, quarantine, and social isolation—the most effective remedy to prevent contagion, to preserve and care for the invaluable gifts of health and life.
This is, without a doubt, the largest health crisis of our time, which overturned all our daily routines and "normality" and tore down all our certainties, security, and traditions. This crisis created a suspicion among us, shook our ideas of solidarity and brotherhood, and of being together, close to each other, and produced a still incalculable global economic slowdown, which is manifesting—first and foremost—in the terrifying number of unemployed people.
No one doubts that this pandemic is a milestone in the history of humanity and a turning point for our way of life, of being and living on this earth. During these days, we all wonder how to get back to what is being called the “new normal.” And although humanity has experienced earlier plagues and pandemics, this pandemic is the one during which we happen to be living. It is about this pandemic that I share here some brief reflections that, being realistic, positive, and hopeful, I hope to mitigate the exaggerated optimism that says that—following the pandemic—the world will be “new,” “distinct,” and radically “different” from what we have known, as if by some magic, the virus will turn us into better human beings and cast away the fatalistic pessimism of those proclaiming disaster, chaos, catastrophe, and death.
First of all, let me summarize—in addition to what I already mentioned above—other realizations and lessons that the pandemic leaves us. Suddenly, we are discovering the uselessness of the thousands of things that we had considered important and the usefulness of those that count: a life with meaning, with direction, with values… because the pandemic makes us confront the reality that nothing else matters when we do not have health or life.
Likewise, the pandemic teaches us that there is no economy or any other area of life in society if we do not have health and life, fundamental values of human existence. For the same reason, too, the pandemic suddenly and crudely revealed to us who is who in society. Who is socially useful and who is useless: because today a hospital’s stretcher-bearer or a restaurant’s delivery driver is more important to society than a soccer player, movie star, or a shoddy, chattering politician to whom we give such worship and platitudes. … Suddenly, health personnel and science professionals—to whom we give so little and no social recognition—were on the front lines of society in the fight against the pandemic.
We also learned about the planetary and ecumenical condition of human beings: that we are deeply and universally together in good and in evil. Quite literally, when someone sneezes in China, there is a fever at the other end of the earth. And, for the same reason, nothing that interests one human being can be alien to the rest of humanity or leave them indifferent. As Pope Francis has continually said, during these days, “no one is saved alone.” We all share the same “common house.”
We learned that although goodness and altruism have not disappeared and have manifested themselves these days in a thousand initiatives of solidarity with the most vulnerable in society, they coexist with the forms of unconsciousness, selfishness, corruption, and evil manifested these days, especially in the lack of cooperation and carelessness in not protecting others against infection, and in the theft of government aid meant for the poorest among us.
Politically speaking, if there was anything that exposed this health crisis, it was the insufficiency and shortcomings of the much-publicized "globalization" and of governmental institutions to face it. Society has tried to solve a global problem with local measures. Large cracks and structural flaws have been discovered within societies, exposing failures through which thousands of forms of structural inequity and injustice cannot go on.
We are also aware of a total absence of world leadership. The United States lost the opportunity to exercise it and those of us who dreamed of a new multilateral world order suddenly woke up, literally “distraught,” without a north, aimless, disoriented. ...
All this gives rise to the danger that—under the pretext of the pandemic— abusers in certain regimes and governments will, in turn, take advantage of collective fears to trample and violate human rights, and civil and individual liberties, by implementing—for example—emergency rule, curfews, states of emergency to legislate, greater police and military intervention to contain the population on the streets, etc. This is a danger that would, unfortunately, lead to new forms of autocracies, authoritarianism, populism, totalitarianism, dictatorships, protectionism, isolationism, nationalism, and xenophobia, which would revert achievements and successes we have already attained in societal life and our democracy.
Curiously and painfully too, society experienced this pandemic largely without the spiritual company of religious institutions. In societies already openly atheistic in relationships and social structures, each human being has had to solve alone—in personal and intimate confinement—the most distressing and fundamental questions about the meaning of life and the proximity of death and what lies beyond.
But this is not the end of human life on earth, nor can it be the end of trust, solidarity, and hope. This crisis must give us all a new and different attitude towards life and others. This crisis may represent an opportunity for the governments of the world to apply new paradigms in all fields of societal life: family, health, education, work, housing, public services, etc. ... This immeasurable crisis is a unique opportunity to adjust human and social values, to right the road. ... Now is not just for beating the virus, but also for overcoming our vain and arrogant failures—both human and global—that have been laid bare by the pandemic.
This crisis urges us all toward new forms of international cooperation and less harmful and healthier forms of globalized solidarity for all so that we can deal with present and future crises such as hunger, wars, climate change, etc. … all themes that involve the entire human family.
From the pandemic, we learn that the health-economy tradeoff is false. That, from now on, the public good requires that the economy be placed at the service of our collective health. ... How we solve and manage the lessons that this pandemic leaves us will depend—in large part—on the near-term future of humanity. The virus will not end economic inequality, nor will it end the animosity between leaders and the led. The virus will not miraculously work a mutation into the human spirit. Yes, from now on, fraternal solidarity, equal opportunities, honest work, and trust—without fear or anguish—in ourselves, in others, and in our institutions will save us.
May we have a vaccine soon! May the joy of life return! May the next pandemic be that of solidarity and fraternal love! “Light is the task where many share the toil,” said Homer. And “a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” said Lao-Tse. Well ... Let's take the first step!
