March 23, 2020

Post Quarantine world. Coronavirus has moved the comfort and blessings of globalization back into the history. How will the life look like after the pandemic? 

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has ruined the habitual lives of millions of people. For as less than two months’ time we have witnessed devaluation of so many things that have been considered important for the previous decades: the consumers’ society has transformed into a society of safety. The people, who were used to travels, found themselves locked within their countries, towns and even flats, sports competitions, concerts and other favourite and habitual leisure events were cancelled. All of us will have to go through hard times, but those, who are under this crisis, will be in an absolutely different world. We will quote views of some foreign thinkers on how coronavirus will change our life and why our world will never be the same again.

“We will win. It’s more likely sooner than later”,” – American president Donald Trump comforted his fellow citizens in his Twitter page. Of course, a couple of days before that, the US leader did not sound that much confident on live announcement: his voice lacked his usual enthusiasm and he started his speech with an announcement that everything was so bad. The main cause of the bad mood was coronavirus. Fighting such a rival turned out to be unprecedentedly hard and tiring, while the damage it causes – catastrophic for the economy and lifestyle of millions of people. No one knows exactly the extent of change to our life after the humanity ends the quarantine, but the outlines of the new picture of the world are already manifesting themselves.

Do not leave Internet, do not make any mistakes

In essence, the new conditions of existing let two genies out of the bottle – working from distance and online education. It will be very difficult to bring those, who will have tested the new way life back to the previous lifestyle. Of course, it is obvious that not every task can be fulfilled from a distance. But many people have realized that for efficient work tidying ourselves up for over an hour and spending almost the same time on the road to go to the works are not the necessary requirements.

Healthcare experts are forecasting growth of telemedicine. It seems paradoxical that personal appointments with the doctors are dangerous and consultations at distance are gradually getting casual. The same applies to the chemists’ and home delivery of medications.

Ethan Zuckerman, Director of Centre for Study of Civil media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology thinks that in democratic countries the legislative establishments can also move to online format. Initially during the pandemic, and later – on pragmatic considerations. There is more sense in politicians to spend more time among their voters, who they represent: this will allow them to better understand the local problems.

It should be noted that the reputation of the governments and science has gone up in such emergencies. According to Zuckerman, the situation of uncertainty and unknown threat moves people to trust only official data. All of a sudden, briefings and recommendations of the Ministry of Healthcare have become unprecedentedly popular.

The pandemic move transfer to electronica democracy closer in time, including, safe, transparent and time and money saving voting from mobile devices. In some American states they already started practicing a mixed model – of voting from mobile phones using paper ballots for finalising the vote results. Of course, there were some arguable cases in many parts of the world – like the failure of electronic counting of votes in caucuses in Iowa or the experiment at election for Moscow City Duma in 2019 – cause doubt in the level of transparency and reliability of new methods in comparison with the old ones. There is another option of readdressing the elections – extend the period for voting, give it for an entire month, which would allow avoiding large accumulations of people in queuing.

Paul Friedman, professor of Yale University thinks that people will get used to spend more time with their own families and, for instance, rarely go out for meals. For the past few years, Americans were spending more money for food, prepared outside their houses, than for buying it and cooking at home. But, today all restaurants are generally closed, while people have to keep to self-isolation, and many will have to start learning to cook. If this practice becomes a normal way of life, maybe a new culture, then many people will not possibly want to go back to public catering institutions, and thus restore the traditions of the lunch and dinner parties for their close friends and family.

Food home delivery services will also get more popular, while usual restaurants will lose most of their profits. In small towns, people are used to spend their free time in trade centres, which is losing its sense during the epidemic. In near future, these may be replaced by open public spaces as parks, where the possibility of close contact and infections drops low.

Call the ambulance, he will get sick soon!

According to professor Yuval Noah Harari from Israel (Author of the bestseller “SAPIENS: Brief history of humankind”), whose thoughts were published in Financial Times, the decisions on fighting the pandemic will determine the fate of the planet in near future. He calls this crisis the most serious challenge to the entire generation. He thinks that the humankind has two main options. The first is the choice between totalitarian control and freedoms. While the second choice is between nationalistic isolation and solidarity with the whole world. According to Harari, coronavirus has placed a number of countries in the position of lab test rats.

Thus, to stop the pandemic, almost all governments are adopting certain requirements to the population. But there may be various ways to achieve adherence to these requirements, for instance – promise inevitable punishment from all-seeing government. Today, modern technologies allow monitoring the people 24/7. Very soon, these technologies may go under skin of citizens: in China they used applications and telephone networks watched whether any person met with any infected people, while the face recognition system identified people with high temperature – of course, this system started failing once the entire population started wearing masks.

In this regard, in Moscow the MIA reported that using directed surveillance cameras they spotted 200 people, who violated the home quarantine conditions. Some have already been punished for this. The Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu issued an emergency order to use the digital system of tracing terrorists for searching coronavirus infected people.

Now the governments want to know not only our search history, but even our body temperature and blood pressure. Harari notes that this overall data collection may go too far. While mandatory biometric bracelets allow easily stopping epidemics, it carries new threats. The governments (or lawbreakers) will be able to determined how one reacts to the speeches of politicians, serial movies and advertisements, and how to cause your emotions personally – and how to completely control you. Even if this epidemic does not lead to such measures, eventually – there will be another nasty thing, which will be a good excuse.

Harari is sure that the dilemma between the confidentiality of privacy and health is a false one: humankind must require both. He thinks that such approach is possible, which the governments of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore demonstrated in practice. In these cases, the officials stressed on overall testing, volunteer reporting and cooperation with well informed and conscientious society. And the author assures the reader that this can be used everywhere – if people realise the hazard of the virus and keep to the hygiene rules.

Virus of contention

The humankind has to answer another question is whether to unite or each person has to take care of himself. According to Harari, the globalization has craped out: the world is in chaos and each government is taking actions independently. When there is not a plan of action for the whole world, these actions are like the behaviour of children in room, abandoned by adults. It turns out that in this metaphor, Harari assumes the USA as the “adults”, who abandoned its attempts to influence the entire world, - and if no one replaces America, it will be more difficult to face planetary scale challenges in future. The historian is sure that we can cope with the pandemic and world crisis only if all countries start cooperating. In the first instance, we must talk about information exchange: a doctor in Milan may know something in the morning, which will save lives in Tehran already in the evening. The British government may take the correct choice to talk to the Koreans, who had already faced a similar problem. An agreement on permission of travels of scholars, doctors, journalists should be achieved immediately in global level.

However, here historian from Israel faces a group of skeptics, who are confident that globalization is a utopia, the hope of which has died. The Foreign Policy journal published in an article with views of most of the supporters of this point of view. For example, political scientist Stephen Walt believes that this pandemic will improve the sovereignty of states and strengthen nationalism. All states, both democratic and totalitarian, are taking a series of emergency measures to overcome the crisis and protect their population. And when the threat recedes, most of the countries will not want to refuse from the authorities, acquired during the crisis.

He thinks that COVID-19 will also speed up the centre of concentration from the West to the East. South Korea and Singapore demonstrated best results in the world in their reaction to the dawning threat, while China efficiently corrected its mistakes and won the battle. INI this regard, Europe and America were very slow and unsystematic in their reaction, which adds to the disappointment in the Western model of society.

Walt also disbelieves that this common evil will unite the humanity, reminding to the audience that the “Spanish ARVI” epidemic in 1918-1919 did not lead to ending of competition of great powers. “We shall witness further distancing from hyperglobalizaion”, - noted Stephen Walt. Thus, COVID-19 will create less open, less prosperous and limitedly free world.

Bloomberg is also sceptical in relation to global world. Its authors point to the behaviour of the two world largest economies – the USA and China: they are trying to blame each other for generation of the virus and deporting journalists on the accusations of disinformation, instead of cooperation in production of a vaccine and sharing of necessary equipment. It looks like the humankind will be behaving like that in other crises. In this regard, the President of International relation Council Richard Haas thinks that the world will see more failed states. When left with the consequences of the pandemic face to face, many countries will feel economic difficulties in economic restoration, and there will be more and more states at the brink of collapse.

Money – for everybody!

Branco Milanovic, Specialist on Inequality of incomes and globalization thinks that global economy will inevitably collapse, but the end of the collapse will depend on whether the governments will cope with controlling the situation for the following six months or a year. If they are successful, then he world will most probably return to the path of globalization, even if its principles will have to be reviewed. If the crisis last longer than that, the globalization may irrevocably pass away into the history.

“The longer the crisis will last, the longer the obstacles will exist for free travel of people, commodities an capital, and the more it will seem normal to refuse from globalization”, - said Branco Milanovic.

End of the global world may lead to tectonic shifts in production and establishment of household sector. Economist Dambisa Moyo thinks that the coronavirus pandemic will cause corporations to compare the benefits of globalised system of production with the reliability of supplies chain at the national level. Shift to the second option will reduce the dependency from international relations. This will guarantee availability of jobs and necessity for citizens, though, the latter will most probably will get more expensive. Director of the Royal Institute of International relation Robin Niblette adds that coronavirus may be the straw, which will break the back of the camel of globalization.

American experts are also of the opinion that quarantine measures will indubitably make the society think about inequality. The position of top-managers with very high wages, who live in their private houses and have the possibility of working from distance, sharply contrasts with the problems of the remaining 80 per cent of American citizens, who have no such financial safety parachute. They can’t afford staying at home all the time – when the pandemic is at its active process, significant number of these continue working in the servicing sector. Online education of children of these people is also doubtful for not all of them have high speed Internet connected to their homes. With this regard, one of the most pressing discussion is adoption of overall basic income. For instance, in order to soften the consequences of the crisis, the US government already made a decision to pay all adult citizens 1000 dollars and underage people – 500 dollar each.

New patriots

The Politico journal also asked prominent world futurologists about the world after the coronavirus. Deborah Tannen, Professor of Georgetown University thinks that the influence of the pandemic will inevitably leave a trace in the memory of everybody, who will survive this year. According to her, people will need different lengths of time to think over. So, this pandemic will teach us to refuse from handshaking or touching our faces for many years.

The society got certain specific obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) – now everbody washes hands.  Frequent personal meetings will move to online meetings, personal intercourse will cease to seem to be a necessity: we had to ground an excuse to move business to online mood, but now it is necessary to explain the reason for meeting in person. Life in poor parts of the world with no broadband Internet connection will get worse for it will reduce access to the opportunities, which were very humble as they were. Development of online communication will create more social links. Social distance between people will inevitably increase and safety will rise together with it.

According to political sciences scholar Mark Lawrence Shrad, this pandemic will finally edit the notion of patriotism. It will free itself from traditional militarism for no war can cope with the virus. Today, not the people in uniforms, but the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, shop attendants, small business owners are the patriots and defenders. Many people are facing unforeseen risks of infection and death, which they had never agreed before, but they are going for that risk because they can’t act otherwise.

Experts all agree on one thing: after the quarantine measures are over, humans will find themselves in a new, unusual world

***

This new virus has already killed 13 thousand people. It has also destroyed the illusion of stability of the global world, which seemed strong. Within a few days, free movement of people, commodities and capital had to be stopped all over the world; presidents are talking about a war situation, while population are wiping off months’ stocks of food in panic.

The world is in suspension. The virus has broken the putative prosperity. Globalization that seemed impossible to roll back has stopped itself due to the threat of spread of the infection. All plans of the consumers’ society turned out to be miserable in comparison with new purposes of this semi-war period – protection of their own countries, towns and families.

The pandemic had confirmed that even in XXI century safety is the main valuable – and for the sake of it the humanity are prepared to sacrifice the habitual merits of civilization without thinking.

Source: https://lenta.ru/articles/2020/03/23/coronavirus/

Translated into English by Muhiddin Ganiev