Misjudgement nr.1

The so-called second wave of COVID disease as a consequence of SARS-COV 19 virus activity is unanimously understood as a crisis. And indeed it is a crisis for our lives are seriously abridged almost all around the world. But is it a disease and a virus behind it a cause of crisis or something else?

First of all, we should understand what a crisis is.

A crisis is an event or a series of linked events that are 

1. unexpected, 
2. create uncertainty and
3. are seen as a threat to threat to important goals (Wikipedia).

While COVID was unexpected, created uncertainty and was seen as a threat to important goals in spring 2020, it most certainly is not unexpected. It does not create uncertainty any more in autumn 2020. We all expected COVID, and so it did not create uncertainty. Indeed, we were not sure how serious would the second wave appear to be beforehand. Still, nevertheless, no one really believed that the virus would cease to exist or affect human bodies. Indeed COVID crisis ended in spring 2020.

This rests us with the third quantifier of a crisis, a threat to important goals. And here the story of what really constitutes the crisis of the autumn 2020 shifts from the virus to measures taken by different states as they try to fight against the virus. 

To understand this, one should take into account stakeholder analysis of the situation. Whose important goals are threatened? While the effects of disease threaten most certainly important goals of hospitals, how does an average citizen feel real threats to his own important goals?

Based on my own experience, exchange of experiences with my friends and peers, analysis of different reflections in media, it is clear that at the moment the much larger threat to our important goals comes from measures that hamper our lives daily than from a disease that could put us in bed for a couple of weeks and could cause our death. Measures are overwhelming, constant and real while a disease is only optional and even if the option actualises the chance of serious consequences are negligible.

While intellectuals and technocrats can single out one issue and neglect the complexity of issues that are as much important as the investigated one, normal human being, normal citizen feels complexity and intuitively adjusts to complexity. A normal human being knows that his life is endangered from various threats from birth on. He constantly evaluates such threats (and opportunities) concerning his ambitions, goals and also his age. He knows that he has unproportionally greater chance to die from cancer or some cardiovascular disease than from COVID. All other threats not only from diseases but as much for crime, car accidents and all other accidents, all of them unpredictable taken separately but 100% predictable as a totality of all threats make COVID after initial surprise negligible threat.

But the fact is that we live in a crisis. If COVID does not cause this crisis, then the only other option is government measures against COVID. Normal citizen knows that »Life is bitch and then you die« meaning that one struggles all his life and then eventually he dies. And why should then state measures cause us to struggle more for no apparent benefit? We understand that the only benefit of measures goes to hospitals, but not to us since we know that we will eventually land into this or that hospital if not directly to a mortuary.

Misjudgement nr. 2

From the first misjudgement comes the second one. 

Since we do not feel the crisis as coming from the biological virus, we understand measures as a cause for our personal crisis. And for that reason, we do not take them seriously. I should better say that we take them seriously for the authority could penalise us for not obeying them, but we perceive the penalty as coming in the form of a fine and not in the form of a disease. 

Even more. Since we feel a real threat from the measures, we find a whole range of strategies and tactics to cheat. So one could now observe two types of responses to measures. Silent and loud. Loud ones are now protesting against measures all around the world. But much larger is a group of silent ones, that know that it is not sustainable to fight against the government. They invent various ways how to avoid measures and make their lives closer to personal aspirations. The situation is similar to USA alcohol prohibition measures at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, all measures that represent a serious threat to our most important goals are being trespassed in this or another way. 

The second misjudgement thus comes from the inability of technocrats in our governments to understand that humans are not rational beings. We are not like western doctors that know everything about the disease and nothing about human life. Average citizen, fortunately, does not understand (rationalise) complexity of life, but simple lives it and feels it. And this is something that contemporary technocrats can not comprehend, and for that reason, their measures are not only ineffective bot more and more counter-effective. As we know, boozing in the USA was never so popular as during prohibition.

Misjudgement nr. 3

But does not life and health come as top two values in almost all cultures? Is not life and health thus the most important goal of each individual. For if it were, then my previous two misjudgements would prove to be only my imagination.

This seems to be the hardest challenge to my thesis that it is not the biological virus but memetic virus visible through memes the one that is felt like the real threat for the common citizen. 

It might be hardest for many, but not for the one that understands the difference between abstract values and real values. It is the difference that I experience each time helping clients to define their brand. When it comes to values, namely, they all immediately put forward their most important values. But then if the branding process takes the right track, they also all of them sooner or later discover that those first values are values that sound nice, but are in fact not their true values. True values are namely those that you would really die for, and their nature is that they are so deeply and unconsciously rooted to our being that it takes time to dig them out. And we always have to dig them out from all sorts of rationalisations, simplifications, political correctness and so on. I have to kill intellectualisms first to come closer to what specific values of a client really are. The process is alike that one of psychoanalysis.

Life and health is definitely the most important value and the issue of every person on earth; if life and health are taken personally. And if taken personally, then the value of life and health for me differs from life and health value of every other person on the Earth. My particular life and health values depend on my set of priorities, my set of key performance indicators for risks and opportunities, my specific goals. To mix values represented by different polls, abstract values presented then in WHO, UN and other similar reports with specific personal values is a third cardinal misjudgement that creates present revolt against government measures.

Appendix to the death

And here I have to add one more inconvenient truth. The one that is so politically incorrect that I took quite some time to decide whether to publish it. It is directly linked to COVID the fact that older you are more you are endangered. Since we live in a civilised society that is founded on the political correctness of equality, it is inconceivable that one would take as normal that older you are closer you are to death as much as it is inconceivable for our society to accept that some children have better cognitive abilities and others are stupid and strong, for instance. It is inconceivable to leave people to die. We are all equal, so even if you are 120 years old, the state should take care of you as much as for a young adult. 

It is unspeakable what I write now in our society. But again, the average unspoiled human being knows/feels the reality of life. He knows that life is a bitch, and then you die. He suffers when an older or younger relative of his or a friend dies, but since he often laments that the best die first, he also understands that there is no equality in life. He understands that there are no measures to be taken to equalise individuals. He understands that by being older, he himself is closer to a final gap and that it is he alone that evaluates threats and opportunities of his life until the very last moment.

Our civilisation does not accept the option that an elder would one day vanish from his community in the wilderness to die. Our civilisation does not, but each of us deep down in his unconsciousness does. It is the inability of our civilisation to conceptualise, to talk about this inconvenient law of nature, that adds up to devastating confusion that hampers both individuals and states in confrontation with COVID.