Welcome to Hiroshima

Things are heating up fast on the coronavirus front, for Europe and America. A doctor has described the Italian situation as “like an explosion.” Canada has so far been lucky, but surely will not be lucky for much longer.

The jurisdictions of East Asia, although they were first hit, seem to have handled the outbreak well. China, after its original fumble, now seems to have things increasingly under control. Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Macao—all doing relatively well, in the circumstances.

I nevertheless naturally assumed that, if and when it reached Europe and America, the thing would be handled much better. Better infrastructure, bigger budgets, higher levels of public trust and trust in government, greater medical expertise, better organized, and so forth.

So far, it does not look to be so. Despite having the previous experience of East Asia to inform them, Italy seems to have managed to react little better than chaotic Iran. The death is alarming, the spread seems uncontained, hospitals are beyond capacity. The comparison on each of these points with South Korea, which got the virus earlier, is striking.

Now, even with this Italian example, other governments in Western Europe and the USA seem to have been disorganized and slow to react. The USA apparently has a critical shortage of test kits. It is almost impossible to get tested for the virus even if you have symptoms. Large public meetings and regular flights have mostly continued. Worse, in the US, Britain, and the Netherlands, government sources seem to be actually spreading objectively false information that minimizes the risks.

You may think I myself am overacting. Time will tell. But it seems to me that in Italy, time has already told.

Aside from East Asia, some other countries seem to have taken the virus very seriously and to have responded energetically: Russia and Eastern Europe have, in general, shut borders, and this has been effective so far. Israel has banned all flights.

Why the difference? I had suggested it was cultural yesterday, but perhaps it is not even that. There is not such a big cultural difference, surely, between Eastern and Western Europe.

I think it tells us something about human nature.

The difference is perhaps that Western Europe and the USA have had things pretty good for a pretty long time—since the Second World War and aftermath, say. For most of us, that is now beyond living memory. The governments and people of Eastern Europe, East Asia, or Israel, while they might be doing well at the moment, have known harsher times more recently.

This makes them better at recognizing a real threat, and mobilizing for it.

The Americans and the Western Europeans will find denial easier. Why take measures that might hurt the economy? It’s not as if bad things ever really happen, is it? It can’t happen here.

And, not accustomed to taking hits, any inconvenience in the meantime seems to the average American or Parisian unacceptable. Better to deny and hope it all goes away.

People have a natural tendency to cover their ears to real bad news; bad news that doesn’t just happen to others. To refuse to see either danger or evil when confronted with it. After all, hearing bad news makes you feel bad. Churchill once said: “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

He credited his own ability to see the true menace of Hitler to his experience of depression.

Orwell too considered his primary talent to be the ability to admit truth, as most men cannot. He wrote “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” He, too, suffered from depression, due to an abused childhood in a public school.

This reveals an interesting law of nature: the poor are likely to be saner than the rich. Those who have suffered are likely to be saner than those who have been lucky in life. Jesus more than hints in the Beatitudes. The poor and the oppressed are those most apt to keep up the constant struggle to see what is in front of their noses. Circumstances have forced them to it.

I think I have seen this myself, consistently.

It is bizarre therefore that we classify “depression” as a “mental illness.” The depressed are in fact the sanest among us. Great minds are always depressed, as Aristotle or Plato said and knew. It is perhaps an emotional disorder, but it is the opposite of a mental disorder in the common sense.