Turning the world on its head: The virus that disrupted “business as usual”

Abstract

While we might feel small, separate and all alone, Our people have never been more closely tethered The question isn't if we can weather this unknown, But how we will weather this unknown together. —Amanda Gorman, "The Miracle of Morning" In a sweeping stroke, the onslaught of the COVID-19 virus turned the world upside down. People faced a natural phenomenon from antiquity,11 This essay is not considering the possibility of a lab-created virus. Investigation of the Wuhan lab in China is ongoing, and conclusions are not definitive. a virus seeking human hosts, particularly those weakened by ill health and low immunity, and conditions worsened by contemporary societal inequalities and failed political responses.22 I have published several pieces and made Zoom presentations in international conferences bringing up the possible roles of these variables. COVID-19 relentlessly pursued its goal of survival by rapidly changing (variants and mutations) to enhance its inherent transmissibility among bewildered folk. The effectiveness and success of the (unintelligent) virus mutating rapidly and prevailing over (intelligent) human resources resembled the stuff of fiction. Most people could not comprehend the fact that the virus acted naturally as an organism and that it is not a new phenomenon. Its efficiency and speed were outside easy reach of familiar political, medical, technological, and financial solutions. They were facing an invisible life-threatening organism of a seemingly enigmatic nature. The difficulty was how to deal with science. Scientifically reliable facts are slow to produce and difficult to understand. Rigor is a process, and science takes time. The pace of systematic research is too slow to satisfy a public's anxious need to know. It is far easier to deal with facts. Politicians were scapegoated as they fumbled to balance public health safety and maintain the economy. As reliable data gradually appeared, evolving technologies expedited instant communication, radiating the information out to national health centers and on social media, which made it instantly accessible to people. The World Health Organization (WHO) acted as a global hub, instantly reaching anxious folk around the world. In my initial analysis of the pandemic, I had noted an omission of what I considered a compelling yet grossly overlooked aspect (El Guindi 2020a, 2020c). The pandemic, I argue, unmasked hidden realities about society, which perhaps politicians chose to deprioritize—poverty, poor health services, homelessness, neglect of the elderly population, racist inequalities, unemployment, unequal access to health care, and poor quality of food, which are all conditions already present in affluent countries but neglected in favor of other priorities. Slowly, as social scientists began to focus on these factors, rigorous publications on these issues began to appear in peer-reviewed publications (Andrasfay and Goldman 2021; Schmelz and Bowles 2021). In this essay, I identify some overlooked pandemic patterns that merit consideration. I also analyze approaches taken by some countries in dealing with development, examples that provide insight into what might work better in today's world, particularly in dealing with global-scale crises. The proposed approach is rooted in notions traditionally central to the field of economic anthropology, such as the concept of exchange and "the gift," in a way that conceptually centers the concept of value and the ideal of socio-moral justice. A rethinking is proposed to deal with today's "world closely tethered." Business was no more "as usual." The shock from the pandemic onslaught led to nonlinear, multidirectional changes in many realms—business, work, travel, school, family, politics, health, social life, and more. For example, the interruption of international travel, which brought big losses to multinational airline corporations, turned international conferences into virtual meetings. Domestically and interna