Continued — Part Five of “Coronavirus: Facts We Need to Know and What We Can Do”

The truth is that, wherever we are in the world, there is still much we do not know about coronavirus. Its precise long-term fatality rate, the possibility of reinfection, possible mutation of the virus, and the degree of progress toward developing a vaccine remain unclear. With influenza, for example, we have either had it ourselves and recovered—sometimes repeatedly during our lives—or we have watched other people contract it and survive. In general, human beings cope far better with familiar and controlled risks. Uncontrolled risks throw us into absolute chaos, whereas controlled risks allow us to stand at the boundary between order and chaos.

Another point is that part of our mind naturally fears the unknown more than the known. We therefore focus more intensely upon unknown risks and magnify their dangers. At present the entire world’s attention is focused on coronavirus because it has suddenly emerged from the unknown as a new threat. Over time, as knowledge increases, this focus will diminish and we will learn how to live with the dangers and risks of the disease, as human beings have done for millennia.

Accepting danger and suffering has always been the first great step toward overcoming them, and this new danger is not exempt from that general rule. Even if everything described above comes to pass, it would mean that we must prepare ourselves to live alongside a virus that has arrived and may remain among us, like influenza. The difference, at the individual level, is that where previously our chance of being overcome by influenza may have been around one tenth of one per cent, this time the chance may be one to three per cent for the new virus. Yet each individual’s chance of surviving remains above 97 per cent, although it decreases with advancing age and chronic illness; even under the figures being discussed at present, the chance of recovery in people over eighty remains above eighty-five per cent.

What defeats us psychologically is our focus upon the small individual probability that, at the social and global level, is reported every day under the name of death—and we may soon see these numbers become far larger and more frightening. This does not mean that the possibility of hundreds of thousands of deaths ahead is unimportant or unrelated to you and me. It means that, at the individual level, the person whose chance of overcoming the disease is greater than 97 per cent can rise with hope and determination so that at the social level we can also overcome what threatens social life.

Moments such as these are a great test for all of us. Sometimes our attention is focused only on winning one game, but in the games of life the wiser strategy is to focus upon the way of acting that allows us to win more games over the longer term.

Nothing places a society on the path to long-term victory more securely than standing beside truth and integrity. Truth allows us to understand our circumstances accurately and mobilise our resources effectively. Social administrators may imagine that there is such a thing as a beneficial lie, or truths that should be concealed, but history has repeatedly shown that this approach ends only in disaster. To speak truth in the language of honesty means standing before one’s people, telling them the depth of the crisis ahead, and at the same time assuring them that together we can overcome it.

Falsehood and lack of responsibility at the threshold of new crises carry within themselves the seeds of the greatest disasters. Such conduct brings Noah’s flood, because it carries chaos beyond the limits of social control and tears apart the fabric of social solidarity.