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Several different 'borders' have played a determinate role in the spread of the coronavirus pandemic
By Michel Chambon | United States
With the rapid spread of the COVID-19, the world seems to be sinking into a sanitary disaster.
But the more the crisis becomes global, the more we need to listen to what this virus says about our societies. In particular, we need to observe how it challenges the separations, hierarchies and values that we have easily relied on.
In particular, new and crude light is shed on our unethical borders.
As a way to explain the critical situation in which the West has suddenly found itself, many claim that viruses don't recognize borders and spread freely. It is like a wave, a tsunami, covering everything in its course.
Yet, we may remember that viruses travel through human carriers. And those do not travel indiscriminately. Some have a stronger passport and extensive resources. So, the propagation of the virus is not a mere mechanical process, but also a socio-political one.
Furthermore, all borders are not the same. As soon as the virus was reported, some were on alert. Temperature was systemically checked and travel history carefully investigated.
Some borders were even closed to keep the virus at bay. Indeed, viruses do not cross borders on their own. And smart borders can stop them.
But since fear and unpreparedness travel faster than viruses, more and more Western countries decided to shut their borders. Commercial traffic continues to an extent, but people must stay where they are.
To justify or blame such an illiberal decision, many explain that the virus calls for border closure. Sure. But were the borders opened before? And to whom?
It was only a few weeks ago that the world could see European guards shouting at refugees trying to cross the Turkey-Greece border. And do we still remember the toddler named Aylan who laid dead on a Mediterranean beach?
So, borders have long been closed to many. And now, it is only a privileged and vocal minority who is suddenly losing its freedom of movement.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 tragically reveals the vanity of Western borders. Yet, it does not put an end to their questionable privatization.
While various European leaders mocked the use of facial mask to hide their incapacity to produce them quickly, they simultaneously glorified hand washing as the miraculous solution to the pandemic.
Suddenly, the most important border to protect is the one between you and others. It is your own responsibility to take care of yourself. In this neoliberal approach, please note that your government is not responsible anymore for your probable infection and its unpredictable consequences.
Another border that is seriously shaken runs between the young and the old. For weeks, Western media and leaders skilfully explained that the COVID-19 kills only elderly people. We did not have to worry since an invisible generational barrier was protecting most of the society.
But this myth was doubly problematic.
First, elderly people are still people and healthy society needs to care for them. Second, since the very widely reported death of the young Chinese doctor, Li Wenliang, on Feb. 7 we knew that the coronavirus could kill anyone. It is a matter of bad luck (and poor governance).
Yet, we had to wait for young people in France and Britain to die before we changed our public discourse. Hopefully, we will also realize how vain this generational border is.
Finally, the last border suddenly shaken is the culturally constructed separation between life and death.
With modernity and its technical success, Western societies have embraced the belief that departure from life is more predictable and controllable. With our knowledge and resources, death is limited to certain categories and processes only. Deaths not due to a self-degeneration of the body were neither normal nor acceptable.
But COVID-19 unexpectedly reminded us that the relationship between death and life goes beyond our power. Despite everything, death is always a possibility, for each of us, and at any time.
Clearly, the coronavirus has challenged a lot of the hierarchies and beliefs that the Western world has been depending on. It is probably not a coincidence that the crisis jumped directly from Wuhan to Europe without affecting other Asian countries first.
While Korea, Singapore and Taiwan had decided not let the virus run wild, it was already propagating in various parts of the European Union and the United States.
Non-adapted borders, cultural self-confidence, political unpreparedness and age-based discrimination are probably all responsible. Nonetheless, when European states decided to go for herd immunity (as if humans could be treated as livestock), their decision also affected the rest of the world and the COVID-19 truly became a pandemic.
In the middle of the crisis, we now see that when it comes to global health, there are many kinds of borders that are unhelpful, vain and deadly. It is not because this virus kills strangers that it should not concern us. It is not because the virus supposedly kills the weak and the old that we should spare our efforts.
All of us deserve life. While we may be forced to confinement and social distancing, we may want to ask ourselves: on which values do we build our communities? Which social and world order do we promote?
But let us conclude on the question of borders. Recently, an increasing number of political leaders are using warrior language to describe the type of fight that nations must adopt against this virus.
Wars are usually associated with borders. We fight to protect a border, a clear line of demarcation between autonomous subjects. But in this combat against a pandemic, exactly which kind border are we fighting for?
Michel Chambon is a cultural anthropologist and a Catholic theologian teaching at Hanover College (USA).
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