Covid-19 and the virus that ginary of pstopped the world: the imaandemics in the
Last update: 22/03/2023
The disease caused by the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. At that time, the world recorded about 118,000 cases and 4,291 deaths. More than two months after this report, the total number of cases around the world rised to 5,715,545 and the death toll has reached 352,908, according to the worldometer website.1
More than the numbers, however, the disease presented itself as a fact that generated fear, due to several other factors, including: the way it spread rapidly around the world, the variety of symptoms and forms of contagion, the relative disorientation of scientists who still have no clarity on how to combat it, and the multiplication of images presented by the media. All of this created the perfect scenario for the reactivation of old fears that we thought belonged to a distant past, as this scholar of medieval themes pointed out:
If there is any difference between the Middle Ages and today in terms of what we currently are, such difference is expressed both in medieval residualities, which are presently updated, and in very unique, typical, and attendant fears: fear of the foreigner, fear of the immigrant, fear of the vaccine, fear of communism, fear of the unpatriotic, fear of social isolation, among other fears that are part of a world in which inequality structures our relationships, government policies, and distribution of benefits (PEREIRA, 2020, emphasis mine).
1Data from 5/27/2020. https://www.worldometer.info/coronavirus/ .
1. And the divine punishment returns...
By the reactivation of these fears, we also return to the explanations that we follow throughout this text. The first of these - punishment for transgression of the divine order—is now presented in two distinct versions.
One of them, which we may call religious, relates the epidemic to the end of time. Once again we have a reading of the pandemic as part of an apocalyptic scenario that anticipates the end of time. From this perspective, and as occurred in 1918, other events, such as the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano (Indonesia), for example, are interpreted as "signs" of the end of time. Such interpretations are very present in the messages of fundamentalist religious people, who clearly attribute the epidemic to a punishment from God for the sins of men—be them communism, the liberation of homosexuality or abortion, transgender children, the "filth" on TV and in the movies, etc., as is the case of the American pastor, for whom the disease is a "reckoning" of God with his country:
Why is there a reckoning? Because we force God out of our country and basically say to Him, 'you are not welcome.' It is a time of reckoning because we have passed laws that allow the taking of children's lives and because marriage has been changed to something that has never been seen before. Both laws are what God calls abominable (PASTOR..., 2020b).
Moreover, if we observe well, we see that this perception of the end of times is not only present among fundamentalists of different religions. The frequency with which the pandemic is referred to by the media as an apocalypse shows how ingrained this archetypal idea is, even in analyses that claim to be objective.
2. Another (equally) religious reading
The idea of punishment, however, is not the only possible religious reading. In a softer version, we have as a highlight, not a God who punishes, but, rather, a God who pedagogically uses illness as a call to reflection and correction by humanity. As the lines below affirm:
It is easier to think of God's punishment, for in this way it deflects responsibility for wrong actions from humanity. The smallest of creatures is causing a world crisis, closing airports and borders and leaving the world powers weakened in the face of its effects. God does not send suffering, but may allow it, not to punish us, but to correct us as a Father who loves his children (DIAS, 2020, emphases mine).
However, the interpretation of the pandemic as divine punishment has yet another version, which we may call secular. In this perspective, defended not only by ecologists, but also by Pope Francis himself, nature would be the personification of the divine order and would be retaliating against men for their mistakes:
We do not react to partial catastrophes. Who is talking now about the fires in Australia or remembers that 18 months ago it was possible to cross the North Pole by boat because the glaciers had melted? Who is now talking about the floods? I don't know if this is nature's revenge, but it certainly is an answer (UM TEMPO..., 2020).
Here again we have the pedagogical perspective of illness, whereby the entity representing the cosmic order responds – to use the Pope's words – to the actions performed by men. Here too the list of possible "sins" causing this evil is long: aquecimento global (global warming), deforestation, reduction of the habitat of wild animals, their consumption as food, etc.
3. The theme of the plot: or everyone against everyone in the globalized world
Thus, according to the American government, the Chinese were to blame for the emergence of the Coronavirus that caused Covid-19, for they created it in a laboratory to go against the United States. To conclude this journey through the fears of Western man, we have the revival of the theme of the plot of the shadows. And in a globalized world, the representatives of evil are also diversified.
According to the theory sustained by the pastor, the virus would have started in China because of the "communist government without God, which persecutes Christians" and performs "forced abortions" (...). This is because, in his view, the country has "hatred of God, hatred of the Bible, and hatred of justice", which would represent a "spiritual rebellion" worthy of divine justice (PASTOR..., 2020a).
The same discourse of the culpability of the Chinese was repeatedly presented by the American president, who even called the coronavirus "kung flu" (ALENCAR, 2020) in a racist reference to the Chinese martial art.2 Meanwhile, a part of the Chinese population believes that the virus would have been created by the American army, to attack China (VEIGA, 2020). And then there is the tycoon Bill Gates, who has been pointed out as responsible for the creation of the virus, of which he has already obtained the patent and also manufactured the vaccine. And so on.
2 Similarly, the president of Venezuela refers to the virus as the "Colombian virus" (NICOLÁS..., 2020).
The fact is that, in the face of the fear generated by a danger beyond our control, such as pandemics, the belief in the action of a deity offended by our behavior or of an agent of evil offers us a defense against the greatest risk of all: meaninglessness. This is the profound objective of the constructions of the imaginary about pandemics: to discover their source in order to then identify the weapons capable of defeating them. By representing the powers of death and destruction, the imagination actually seeks to domesticate them, reducing their power and drawing them into the field where it is possible to defeat them, either by appeasing the divine or by identifying and fighting their enemies. Thus, erecting a metaphysical defense against death and, above all, against meaninglessness is the true role of the imaginary in human societies. For, ultimately, it is the cultural images that constitute the therapeutic and psychological reality of the soul.
Recife, February 24, 2021.
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how to quote this text
OLIVEIRA, Rosalira dos Santos.Covid-19 e o vírus que parou o mundo: o imaginário das pandemias no Ocidente. In: Pesquisa Escolar. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 2021. Available at: https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/artigo/covid-19-and-virus-stopped-world-imaginary-pandemics/. Access on: month day year. (Ex.: Aug. 6, 2020.)