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Coronavirus: To the question “when will we return to” normal “living conditions, answers the professor of Social and Natural Sciences at Yale University, Nikolas Christakis
Now, we all wonder what is normal and what is not, since our life has now entered a new phase of normality. However, the question, for example “when we can hug our loved ones again “, is constantly circulating in our minds.
Nikolas Christakis, gives his answer, in a question that “plagues” all of humanity.
The following is the full text of Yale Professor Nikolas Christakis’s interview with Nikos Papadimitriou for the Athens and Macedonia News Agency:
Q: Isn’t this also a peculiarity of the pandemic of our time, Mr. Christakis? Covid-19 patients die alone, without their children …
A .: Unfortunately, many died alone – I even describe it in the book, “The Arrow of Apollo” – and I consider it completely absurd, it is a disgrace! We could accept that in the first wave then there was no choice, we did not have enough personal protective equipment, the doctors did not even have it, while there was no time to prepare … Now in the second wave there are no such excuses and indeed in America don’t think they are still dying on their own.
Q: Professor, you have studied humanity’s reaction to the pandemics of the 20th century (Spanish flu 1918, Asian flu 1957). What similarities and differences have you noticed?
A: With covid-19, an average of 1% of people with symptoms will die. The percentage is quite high, but we should be grateful that covid-19 is not as deadly as smallpox and cholera. It could be much worse… Although it seems so strange and unfortunate that we are forced to deal with this pandemic, we must keep in mind that pandemics have always been something that humans have been dealing with. It’s been going on for centuries, it happened in Troy (ss where the title of your book was inspired). Of course, this doesn’t happen often, which is why we now consider it absurd, although it isn’t.
Q: From the study of present and past pandemics, would you say that disease and death come together, bring people closer together?
A: This has been debated for a long time and there are two sides. On the one hand, we can assume that because we all face this danger together, you would think, and very often do, that we are concentrating on facing the enemy. We can see in Greece that this happened, everyone stayed at home. On the other hand, especially when too many die, as was the case in Europe with the Black Death, society was destroyed and one abandoned the other. And then there were the people who took care of others. When we are faced with a germ from which we are in danger, good and evil increase.
Q: In the end, in addition to the direct victims of covid-19, are there also indirect ones? Or because of the economic crisis, but also because of loneliness, social isolation?
A: When we are faced with an epidemic, there is loneliness. However, I don’t think loneliness is going to play a huge role in our society for years to come, I think our society will change. There are – as I describe in my book – three phases: the first phase is the one we are experiencing now, the first, the second and the third wave. By 2022 I think we will be forced to live like this. In the second phase, when we have the vaccine or many will have gotten sick (herd immunity) so that the virus can no longer circulate in our society. This phase will last from 2022 onwards for about two years, until 2024. We will be so shocked by what we have faced that not everyone will suddenly return to the taverns or take off their mask and get on the buses. again. For a time, people will be scared. In the third phase, starting in 2024, we will have the post-pandemic period and somehow life will go back to where it was before.
Q: Will it be exactly like before?
A: There will be something left, let’s say we may not shake hands or people prefer to work from home. Once we have verified that it is possible to do a lot of work from there, many companies will consider that they do not need to bring personnel to the work, since they will be able to do it from home. For businesses to save money, there will be changes in our economy. This weekend I actually have an article in the Wall Street Journal that describes this.
Q: Despite the expectation of vaccines, why do you see the situation dragging on for so long?
A: Even if they discover the vaccine in 2021, they must make it and ship it around the world. We will need billions of doses and the population needs to be vaccinated. In America, at least, many will not be sure, they will not want to do it right away. Then there will be a delay, we will not suddenly have a solution to the problem. I think that for at least one more year we will have these problems.
Q: And joy, like the epidemic, is transmitted from person to person. You’ve spent a lot of time on social media, professor. What are they and how are they affected by the pandemic of our time?
A: The social networks that interest me are not online networks. I mean the personal networks we have, your friends, my friends. I described in the previous book, the “Draft”, published a year ago in Greece, how and why people do social networks. And what role does social media play in our lives? One of these roles is that, along with the ability to convey ideas, we have the opportunity to learn from others. This fact, that we learn things from others, is one of the reasons why we build social networks. We live in these networks to transmit ideas. Unfortunately, germs also circulate within the networks themselves. Both in the “Draft” and in the “Arrow of Apollo” (ss the last two books of the author) I share the following idea: that the circulation of the germ is, in a certain way, what we have to pay, the debt that we have for the fact that ideas are circulating. I approach you to learn from you and, by approaching, I take a risk. Instead of giving me an idea, you are giving me a germ. But evolution has helped us to have social networks in which we increase the good things and, as far as possible, reduce the bad.
Q: How is life in America now? Do you think that covid-19 will affect the elections?
A: I think covid-19 has lowered Trump’s chances of winning. Because our government’s reaction to COVID-19 was so incompetent and I think people see it. They couldn’t protect the White House, they couldn’t save themselves. Older people who do not want to die from covid-19 are not interested in supporting a president who … And, according to the latest polls, they do not support him as before. Because they see that he did not manage to take care of them. It was not necessary that the reaction in the United States was so bad, because we have one of the best scientists and doctors in the world, we have the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) of which everyone was jealous. However, this president could not take advantage of the scientists he had. Unfortunately.
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