COVID-19: there is only one priority
An excellent article in The New York Times, “A Warning for the United States From the Author of ‘The Great Influenza’” by John M. Barry, professor of public health at Tulane University and author of several books on historic pandemics, sets out the priorities for the future, and above all highlights the false dichotomy between bringing the pandemic under control and protecting the economy. His argument is simple: we must do everything that needs to be done to stop the spread of Covid, using every measure at our disposal; the economy will recover later.
Biology is biology, and it’s not interested in what we think. What’s more, the economy is a human entelechy that can be redefined in countless ways. Now, more than half a year after the first cases were detected in Wuhan and several months after the declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization, we know more about the transmission of COVID-19 than we did then, and what we do know is very worrying: social distancing within enclosed spaces is not preventing the spread of infection. Indoor transmission of the virus can take place between people who are several meters away, meaning that returning to work in offices or reopening schools is nothing short of reckless, and will only ensure that the numbers of infections and victims will continue to rise.
