What kind of pandemic would you like to unleash?
Authors: Alejandro (Alex) Jadad & Tamen Jadad Garcia
“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be crazy by those who could not hear the music” — Anonymous, often attributed to many authors, mostly Nietzsche
The term pandemic was used for the first time by English physician Gideon Harvey to describe the Great Plague that killed 25% of the population of London in 1666. Since then, the concept has been used almost exclusively to describe a global spread or outbreak of a disease (1).
Etymologically, however, the term pandemic has a much broader meaning, as it is made up of two Greek roots: ‘pan’, which can be translated as all, and ‘demos’, people. In other words, it could be used in relation to anything that affects large numbers of individuals, worldwide. This is why non-infectious (or noncommunicable) diseases, such as diabetes or cancer, or conditions such as obesity, are also considered pandemic (2–5).
What if pandemics could also be social?
Although this might sound absurd, a growing body of research supports the existence of social contagion, or the ‘spread’ of ideas, emotions, beliefs or behaviour from one person to another (6). This has been shown, for instance, in relation to unwanted phenomena such as smoking, loneliness, depression, illicit drug use and divorce; as well as positive ones, such as happiness, altruism or cooperative behaviour (7). The corollary is that cultural pandemics have been occurring all the time, hidden in plain sight. We wear pants and skirts, and not togas, because the former spread more effectively. Videos turn ‘viral’ constantly, being watched by billions of people around the globe. A song gets pandemic whenever it turns into a worldwide hit.
What kind of social pandemics are dominating right now?
Paradoxically, health, viewed as the ability to adapt to the inevitable challenges we face throughout our lives, might be the most significant pandemic, as more than 70% of humans consider themselves to be healthy (8,9). In fact, all pandemic diseases, past and present, pale in comparison. The Black Death, for instance, killed around 50 million people (10), representing 11% of the global population at the time (11). The 2018 flu pandemic was responsible for the deaths of 3% of the world’s inhabitants (12). Even the toll of the infectious diseases that killed more than 90% of the indigenous peoples of the Americas after the arrival of the European colonizers is estimated at up to 45 million, equivalent to 9% of the total world’s population in the 15th century (11). Even depression, which might be the main cause of disability nowadays, affects 300 million people worldwide, a comparatively meagre portion of humanity (13).
Perhaps the only condition that has a higher prevalence than health is dental caries, which is both a physical and social challenge, as it is present in 60% to 90% of school children and 100% of adults, worldwide (14).
What kind of pandemics would we want to nurture?
If ideas, emotions and behaviours could spread widely, it is essential to notice which are being reinforced at all levels, and within all contexts, from the individual and private, to the species and planet. It is just as important, on the other hand, to reflect upon those we would like to propagate, deliberately, as we tend to do so often with songs, videos, pictures, fashions and fads.
What if we decided to promote positive social pandemics that could impact the ability of large groups of people to live well together, no matter what?
How about a pandemic of decency, which Albert Camus regarded as the best response to “pestilence”, in his novel The Plague, back in the 1940s?
Are we able to believe in the possibility to trigger a pandemic of love, viewed as “the ability to wish good, do good, see good and feel good.”? (15) Or a pandemic of solidarity, or generosity or kindness?
Even further, what would it take for us to imagine and create a pandemic of wisdom, understood as the ability to know what it is to live well, and do everything possible to achieve this, given the circumstances, while enabling others to do the same, and to experience a full life, in our own way, together? (16).
What is our bet?
We humans have a natural tendency to self-sabotage, by making choices that go against our best interests. We are very good at impairing ourselves by getting into our own way.
Taking into account our long history of self-harm, our likely course will be one towards a pandemic of hatred, fundamentalism, egoism, fanaticism, insatiability and suicidal stupidity.
So, as cheerful pessimists, we bet on Gaia — our Mother Earth — and her capacity to control our behaviour, even if it takes accelerated self-induced extinction (17).
What would it take to prove ourselves wrong?
What kind of pandemic would you like to unleash?
References
1. Honigsbaum M. Pandemic. Lancet. 2009 Jun 6;373(9679):1939.
2. Popkin BM, Adair LS, Ng SW. Global nutrition transition and the pandemic of obesity in developing countries. Nutr Rev. 2012 Jan;70(1):3–21.
3. Hu FB, Satija A, Manson JE. Curbing the Diabetes Pandemic: The Need for Global Policy Solutions. JAMA. 2015 Jun 16;313(23):2319–20.
4. Seffrin JR, Hill D, Burkart W, Magrath I, Badwe RA, Ngoma T, et al. It is time to include cancer and other noncommunicable diseases in the millennium development goals. CA Cancer J Clin. 2009 Sep;59(5):282–4.
5. Allen L. Are we facing a noncommunicable disease pandemic? J Epidemiol Glob Health. 2017 Mar;7(1):5–9.
6. Marsden P. Memetics & Social Contagion: Two Sides of the Same Coin? The Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. 1998;2. https://web.stanford.edu/~kcarmel/CC_BehavChange_Course/readings/Additional%20Resources/social%20contagion/Social%20Contagion.htm
7. Christakis NA, Fowler JH. Social contagion theory: examining dynamic social networks and human behavior. Stat Med. 2013 Feb 20;32(4):556–77.
8. Jadad AR, Arango A, Sepúlveda JD, Espinal S, Rodríguez D, Wind K, editors. Unleashing a pandemic of health from the workplace: Believing is seeing. Kindle. Beati Inc; 2017. 235 p.
9. Jadad AR. Creating a pandemic of health: What is the role of digital technologies? J Public Health Policy. 2016 Nov;37(Suppl 2):260–8. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057/s41271-016-0016-1.pdf
10. Benedictow OJ. The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History. Boydell Press; 2004. 433 p.
11. Nelson JC. Historical Atlas of the Eight Billion: World Population History 3000 BCE to 2020. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2014. 106 p.
12. Johnson NPAS, Mueller J. Updating the accounts: global mortality of the 1918–1920 “Spanish” influenza pandemic. Bull Hist Med. 2002 Spring;76(1):105–15.
13. Depression and other common mental disorders: global health estimates. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/254610/WHO-MSD-MER-2017.2-eng.pdf
14. Oral health. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs318/en/
15. Jadad-Garcia TJ. Everything You Need to Know about Love (Almost). Beati Inc.2018. 188 p.
16. Jadad AR, Jadad Garcia TM. From a digital bottle: A message to our selves in 2039. JMIR. 2019;21(11):e16274. https://www.jmir.org/2019/11/e16274/
17. Jadad AR, Enkin MW. Does humanity need palliative care? European Journal of Palliative Care. May 2017. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G2h6l8SEfdDT1dN-q9rouA9ncCSeDpDy/view?usp=sharing
