Covid Is War

szcz.org

3 points·msszczep2··4 comments

Covid isn't a war. Using that metaphor is dangerously close to vindicating the anti-vaxxers/maskers who are trying to say that rules equate to violence. It doesn't matter that the "enemy" is a virus.

Wars are usually political and both sides lose heavily. With Covid, "winning" means only that lives are spared from a natural disaster.

Wars are fought by knowing combatants and can be ended with treaties. Covid is a fight against a virus, which has no agency.

Most importantly, wars have sides. Fighting a disease doesn't have sides, only disagreements about how hard to fight and what tactics to use.

> Total war refers to the mobilization of the entirety of a country or society

Welp, by this definition, covid isn't war. At least half of society seems to be doing nothing.

Well, "civil war" is when society is divided into camps and these camps fight each other, or side with an external force. So, IMHO, "war" is still a fitting abstraction - the question is which side you are taking - people's or virus's.

That is the issue. Normally war is among forces wanting to fight. Others are causalities or enemy collaborators even.

I think if we (the world) had taken this as what it really is - a war, we would have been done with it by now. Even by now the production of vaccines is not sufficient to vaccinate the whole world at once. The introduction of vaccines was stupidly delayed because of non-sense ethical issues not allowing to conduct challenge studies regardless of availability of tens of thousands of healthy volunteers.

Now the enemy has made allies with the most stupid ones among us and the war is much harder to win. In principle we have lost it already as the virus has found a way to enter into other species. It will never end.

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