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Newsletter of the European Chiropractors’ Union
Covid-19
deaths. The most famous of these is
Venus and Adonis, published in 1593.
Shakespeare possibly also wrote the
tragedy King Lear during plagueinduced
quarantine in 1606. Nor
was he alone in putting what we now
call lockdown to good use - Isaac
Newton discovered gravity whilst
in his garden during isolation and
experimented with the use of prisms,
leading to the conclusion that the
colours of the rainbow lie behind
light. Daniel Defoe wrote Journal of
a Plague Year, lamenting that “private
mischief won the battle against
general benefit” with people fleeing
to the countryside and spreading
infection. Isaak Walton penned Th e
Compleat Angler in 1653 as homage
to life in the countryside.
My final example has to be
the three waves of the misnamed
Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20.
(Not until 2015 did the WHO
recommend that diseases should not
be named geographically.) There
was a death toll of over 50 million
(often those who were young and
fit), far higher than the numbers
killed in the First World War. There
was widespread volunteering to
help fellow citizens, often with
accompanying self-sacrifice. Doctors
had been conscripted into the
frontline armies for the Great War
and, as a result, many of the sick
were left to fend for themselves. It
is a sobering thought that only 100
years ago we were still 12 years away
from the invention of the electron
microscope and 15 years away from
the isolation of the influenza virus.
Knowledge of the past can only
do so much. In 2020, on the day
that China reported a tenfold
increase in coronavirus cases,
Adam Kucharski, a professor at the
London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine, published Th e
Rules of Contagion which wryly notes
that epidemiologists are prone to say,
“If you’ve seen one pandemic you’ve
seen… one pandemic”. All play
out differently and understanding
contagion has contributed
significantly to the reduction
of death rates from infectious
diseases in the past 20 years. One
finding is that understanding the
nature of what society faces in any
pandemic is crucial. It took two
to three years to discover the HIV
pathogen; how remarkable it is to
think that the Covid-19 pathogen
has been discovered, sequenced
and incorporated into a test kit so
quickly.
One area where the past probably
is a good guide to the immediate
future is in the human and political
reaction to pandemic. We have
seen the best and the worst of
international behaviour – from
collaborative research efforts for a
vaccine to ‘beggar-my-neighbour’
policies interrupting the supply
chain for protective equipment.
In many countries we have stood
at our front doors or on balconies
during lockdown to applaud the
heroes of our frontline health
systems. This first response of
solidarity in the face of sudden
unexpected events is profoundly
human, but it is hard to judge
the significance of events whilst a
participant. History suggests that
this recognition of heroes will be
followed by a hunt for villains. In
the inevitable public enquiries that
will follow, those in authority will
seek to apportion blame. “Which
country handled the situation best?”
will be a central question,
followed by “Why wasn’t
it us?”
What becomes habitual
during a pandemic (particularly
if there are successive waves)
will become the new normal.
Thus, the current pandemic
has dramatically stimulated the
demand for teleconferencing,
an existing under-utilised
technology, and online shopping.
As I write, Marks & Spencer,
iconic symbol of the British
High Street, reports a reduction
of 60% of in-store trade partially
offset by an increase (from a much
lower base) of 40% in online
shopping. It is not alone in this
experience.
The longevity of recently
introduced tele-consultation and
telehealth is still unclear, but
chiropractors will be well advised
to consider how their economic
resilience can be made stronger,
especially if there are subsequent
waves of infection, as seems highly
likely.
Political leaders of the profession
must look to the identity and
position chiropractic occupies in
the health care system and the
members of their associations
will also expect leadership in the
challenge of personal survival in
a further lockdown or stringent
public health requirements. The
chiropractic schools in Europe have
shown great agility in responding
to the challenges of lockdown and
social distancing (see page xx); they
have changed for ever and will be
the better for it.
Politicians seek to weaponise the
crisis for political ends. They liken
the fight to control pandemics
to war in calls for solidarity and
sacrifice. And the analogy of war
is not entirely misplaced. War and
pestilence are a great stimulus to
innovation, both because new
things are discovered and because,
under the stress of a mortal
threat, unrealised
demand for
existing
underutilised
discoveries comes to
the fore. Recent
research, for
example, has revealed
how the introduction
of canvas baths
on the frontline
during World
War I to combat
disease spread by
lack of hygiene,
and to combat the boredom of
much of life in the trenches, led
to increased demand for home
bathing in domestic life from
returning soldiers, with consequent
improvements in public health.
Of course, the main challenge is
medical - to stop the spread and to
prevent deaths. But the after-effects
will be geopolitical, economic and
social. In 1910–11, for example,
following an outbreak of plague in
Manchuria, Britain, Japan, Russia,
Germany and France scrambled to
offer help with the not-so-hidden
intention of improving their
chances of colonial expansion. So
now, China has turned the tables
to present itself as mentor to much
of the rest of the world and was in
the forefront of public ceremonies
creating honorific martyrs from its
frontline workers
A Cambridge historian of
science has reminded us that
epidemics breed fear and suspicion,
multiplying more rapidly than
any virus. As a result, fault lines in
society are revealed and exaggerated.
If the past is a guide, the people
will question the motives of elites
who are seen to have benefited from
the crisis. There will be renewed
interest in the structures and ethics
that constitute good government.
Exceptionalism has been ruthlessly
exposed as flawed and dangerous.
The tendency to accept a victory
of emotion over fact, spurred on
by social media, may be shortlived
as frightened people yearn
for information from sources they
can trust. A tightened relationship
between national politics and
personal values, first observed by
social historians in the aftermath
of 17th century crises, may be
repeated.
It is worth reflecting on the
certainty that at the end of the
current pandemic, what we will see
will not mark the end of the struggle
between virulent infectious disease
and humanity.
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