Invisible Enemies: Coronavirus and Other Hidden Threats
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SYMPOSIUM: COVID-19
Invisible Enemies: Coronavirus and Other Hidden Threats D. M. Shaw
Received: 5 May 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Pty Ltd. 2020
Abstract To say that coronavirus is highly visible is a massive understatement in terms of its omnipresence in our lives and media coverage concerning it, yet also clearly untrue in terms of the virus itself. COVID-19 is our invisible enemy, changing our lives radically without ever revealing itself directly. In this paper I explore its invisibility and how it relates to and exposes other invisible enemies we are and have been fighting, in many cases without even realizing. First, I analyse the virus itself and how its stealthy nature has transformed our lives. Second, I describe how the invisible epidemic of social media sharing of fake news about the virus worsens the situation further. Third, I explore how the virus has revealed to us what really matters in our lives and has forced us to re-evaluate our priorities. Fourth, I go on to explore the underlying structural weaknesses and disparities in society that have been exposed by the virus but previously remained unconsidered for so long that they too have become camouflaged, even if their effects are all too apparent; like the virus, neoliberal capitalism is an invisible enemy that has made prisoners of us all. I conclude by suggesting that the coronavirus pandemic represents a hidden opportunity to overcome perhaps the biggest invisible enemy of all: the moral distance that separates us from others. Only by
D. M. Shaw (*) Institute for Biomedical Ethics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] D. M. Shaw Care and Public Health Research Institute, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
rendering the rest of humanity morally visible to ourselves can we overcome capitalism and stop treating other people as invisible enemies. Keywords Coronavirus . Ethics . Social distancing . Capitalism . Inequalities . Public health
The Invisible Enemy The coronavirus is invisible, but its effects are visible everywhere. Most people in the United Kingdom have been confined to their homes, venturing out only for shopping and occasional exercise. When we do go out for a walk, we cross the street to avoid walking within two metres of anyone not in our households. Playparks and schools are closed; streets are quiet; flights have almost stopped. And those are just the effects on our everyday lives; the most terrible effect is the increase in the number of deaths attributable to the virus. Non-essential operations and treatments have been stopped, intensive care units are overwhelmed, and even there, 50 per cent of COVID-19 patients who get a bed will not make it out alive. All of this because an invisible virus jumped from a bat to a pangolin to a human and then on to millions more people. Of course, if we could actually see the virus, it would be much easier to deal with it. If, as my son Sam has suggested, the virus was basically just little red guys who jump
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