PANACEA 2020

For the powerful few who shot down the ‘canary(ies) in the mine’ thus
endangering hundreds of millions of innocents across the globe – No worldly
punishment could even come close, although regrettably I don’t envisage one
coming at all.
Moving forward past the coronavirus, I would be naïve to suggest that the
world’s ‘war-time’ leaders will have changed in the slightest. For many, what
is right and what is politically convenient overlap occasionally, but are often
separate concepts. For instance, it just so happens that a dictatorial state
with mass surveillance and established channels for government messaging turned
out to be exceedingly effective in limiting infection control and saving lives.
Even so, whatever good is accrued is quickly followed by exploitative
misconduct as many such countries have taken advantage of the present temporary
situation as an opportunity to instate permanent infringements on personal
privacy. To make matters worse, this then muddies the waters for any members of
the international community to attempt to implement measured, short-term
digital surveillance as a useful tool without the baggage of its typical overreaching
dictatorial packaging. Political conundrums such as these will surely
continue to feature in our post-COVID-19 world, but for my wellbeing’s sake, I
selfishly hope they leave medicine out of it.
After the first wave of the coronavirus, what worries me more than the
politicians is the state of desperation of the people they govern. Staggering
proportions of Australians, Americans and Lebanese alike have been afflicted
with economic struggles in a way they could never have otherwise predicted.
Unsurprisingly, no-one had factored in ‘pandemic’ into their estimations of job
security. So, we find ourselves in a position where newly heightened emotions
of anxiety and hopelessness have fanned the flames of mistrust in conventional
medicine and ‘big pharma.’ People have been forced to choose between the
potential, invisible threat of a respiratory infection and the immediate,
tangible threat of losing their homes or their children starving. If I weren’t
a doctor, I may have been seduced by the black-and-white nature of this
argument. I mean: it’s not even cancer, the C-word which we avoid even saying
due to the heft the mere word carries – so how bad can it be?
Analogous to the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the degree of difficulty is
compounded by the fact that the more well-controlled the disease spread is, the
more one can mistakenly argue it wasn’t a concern in the first place.
Subsequently, if restrictions aren’t followed, and eventual vaccination isn’t
widely taken up, I fear there is no foreseeing a world after the coronavirus;
not for a long time anyway. The issue of an intangible and distant enemy is far
more benign than a malignant enemy which has ravaged through every suburb,
workplace and household. With the second wave spreading through Melbourne and
creeping up on Sydney, restrictions notwithstanding, I fear it will not be long
before ‘coronavirus’ becomes the newly dreaded C-word. As such, I hope for the
opportunity for the masses who dismiss COVID-19’s true potential for harm to
never have that harm reach them or their loved ones. I deeply hope they are
educated by theory and statistics so they may prevent the lesson becoming
imprinted through personal tragedy.
With all this happening on an international, societal, professional and
personal level, it is incredibly difficult to think of the future in terms of
life post-COVID-19. To be honest, even thinking about next week in any certain
terms personally triggers an impulse towards prayer rather than prediction. So,
I pray for relief for our world on fire and that we come out of the flames on
the other end as a global community (citizens and governments alike) taking a
page out of medical ethics textbooks by collectively working a little harder
towards upholding justice, beneficence and non-malevolence.
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