To illustrate the coronavirus pandemic, the WHO office in China recognized on 31 December 2019 the “cases of pneumonia unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City”[1]. The virus SARS-Cov-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) — announced by ICTV (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses) on 11 February 2020 — causes the disease COVID-19 or coronavirus disease[2]. It has has 2 to 14 days of “incubation period”[3].

Virus and its information went viral in mass media and the Internet. People became cautious about it. Look at the societal transition of attitude towards the pandemic, it is scientific and also psychological aspects embedded in their behaviour. Scientific is, thanks to development of vaccine, it protects people especially the vulnerable. Psychological is that social negatives are more or less lessened with relief of vaccination. Also, over the years of living with the virus existing closely in people’s life, they come to know what kind of virus it is, which is different from the moment the virus emerged. At first, people were afraid of the virus even in small number of people infected in their communities. Even from its beginning of period, it’s been said that the older (with chronical disease) has higher risk than others, and mortality rate is not so much high for society in total perspective. The higher risk in older generations would mean for sure that the society needs to deploy the solution to take care of that risk, but that doesn’t mean that we should care about only that risk, without looking at other perspectives. For that public policy, people with less severe symptons would be better not to be transported to hospitals as the number of people who can be cared is limited, and hospitals could be overwhelmed by patients and those who need them could not be treated. Preventive measures and isolation of high risk people such as elderly should be done but we cannot place lockdown always in effect to the society since the social negatives caused by it is going to be larger. In terms of allowing people’s activity ouside their home or putting its restrictions, their standards of putting it harder or lesser changed over the societal situation psychologically and economically.

More deeply, think of the societal solutions, people had to deal with pandemic as they did in the previous centuries, while not so much being able to progress their policies against it. For example, lockdown the society, not allowing people to leave home if not necessary. Dense population in a city makes necessary to implement more complex societal rules than rural communities. To have their society run smoothly, detailed norms are required to be shared in a dense community. Population is an important factor in deciding rules. In pandemic, authorized power infiltrates into every bit of life except inside home[4]. We live in societies where everyday how many infected are in the front line of news. What we should care is the number of deaths, not infected. While we care about vulnerable groups of people who should be protected, of course, the restrictions on people’s life ought to be decided based on the social negatives it would have. The question is whether it is worth the repeated government’s decision of putting state of emergency or lockdown in effective. People’s feeling toward the virus decides whether the organization including company and nation ease restrictions or not.

People’s reaction towards the coronavirus pandemic which lessened the momentum of the globalization having to do with the nationalism against globalization, particularly represented by Brexit referendum in 2016, followed by US presidential election of 2016 in which Donald Trump won, French presidential election of 2017 in which Marin Le Pen showed the influence. Until 2016, globalization was a trend, after there the world faced a backlash that derives from the worry of people feeling their identity is undertreated[5]. Because of the a bit dramatic transition toward globalization, nationalism is on the rise with the feeling that their nations and its citizens are not recognized enough. Plus, in the process of the transformation towards globalization, it has been wondered that the globalism is too bigger to appreciate people’s identity adequately. The community in which they are recognised each other would meet the demand for recognition. In liberal democracy, not the superiority of one over another that would meet the want but the mechanism of admitting each and everyone[6]. Consideration on why we choose democracy is intertwined in this regard. Also in pandemic, one should not be stirred up by fear without thinking. Because we give meaning to the words or what we have done or is going to do, we, as species, gives opportunities for us to think.

Coming back to globalization, people would come up with immigration, or easier conditions of traveling from one place to another. To name a few, living in other countries (though acquiring long-term visa with job opportunity was still hard issue as of before-pandemic), studying abroad, touristic travel. Technically, aviation domain let people, or commodities fly to other locations much easier. Politics in that age needed to put emphasis on immigration policy which was subject to the critical debate. Political candidates had to propose any idea on that domain. Think of the world after pandemic, in terms of the stratified world that in political and economical sense politics is based on nation-state but economy knows the pleasure of trading beyond borders, economy would remain as it had been before-coronavirus[7]. Economically moving to get profits beyond borders, politically put the importance in their nation. Custom would not easily go back to the before-pandemic. Changed custom shared by society after pandemic arose would remain at least for a while. Though it may disppear from society over the coming decades. It feels like people do forget what has been ordinary in their experiences. This is not in a sense that people used to gather together in one place or another as facts, but in a sense that their body perceives one thing as ordinary and another as unordinary. This sense changed, being depending on the social surroundings. And the current sense stemming from the current social conditions are beciming somewhat ordinary for them. This is human capability of adaptation to the environment in which they live.

Footnotes

[1] WHO. Situation report – 1. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=20a99c10_4 Published 21 January 2020 Accessed 28 June 2020.

[2] The Guardian. Will Covid-19 mutate into a more dangerous virus? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/will-covid-19-mutate-into-a-more-dangerous-virus Published 22 May 2020. Accessed 29 June 2020. WHO. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it Accessed 30 June 2020.

[3] WIRED. Ask the Know-It-Alls: What Is the Coronavirus? https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-a-coronavirus/ Published 3 March 2020. Accessed 30 June 2020.

[4] Coronavirus and philosophers. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Michel Foucault. http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/ Accessed 2 May 2021.

[5] Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEGiAdWUnG8. Accessed 10 December 2020.

[6] Francis Fukuyama. The end of history and the last man. ISBN 978-0-7432-8455-4. p.xx.

[7] Influenced by Hiroki Azuma, he argued the stratification in his book previously. Azuma, H. (2017). Genron 0: A philosophy of the Tourist.