Greatest demonstration of stupidity of our times: Or, how the world's most powerful countries managed the Pandemic
Given that during the middle of last year, and even in our recent days, Christopher Nolan's film "Oppenheimer" has been all the rage.... It is only fair to remember several things that, perhaps, we have left aside. And it's hard to understand, because from my perspective it's one of the clearest manifestations of human stupidity we've ever seen as a species. It is an era where technology, interconnection and the means to "flee" from idiocy have been so massified, as never before in the history of Humanity, it is curious that we have forgotten a couple of things that happened during the Pandemic exactly 4 years ago.... This is a brief chronology, and my point of view.
Jose Edelstein, is a great science communicator. Perhaps the people who make life in this Deep Dives community do not know him too well. But what makes the mere fact of naming him relevant, is that in a podcast I listened to, he was asked about the management that the most powerful governments in the world had during the chaos that was the Covid-19 pandemic... Edelstein answered in such an elegant, simple and concise way, that it simply inspired this post. And it was as follows: "
In 1942, the United States, which was the only country in the world not attacked by the Nazis, was able to bring together in less than a month more scientists on a single project than anyone else in the history of mankind. Thus the atomic bomb was born." I found that statement fascinating. I have always been a passionate reader of the history of human conflict. Well, if with the organization that the Yankee government had in the early 1940's, and faced with the theoretical, not real threat of the Germans developing the atomic bomb, the government was able to create something that did not exist, nor had it been imagined in less than 3 years with the technology that a smartwatch of our days possesses....
It seems banal what I state here, but think about it coldly. In 1942, in the middle of an arid desert, without any planning and with almost zero certainty of success, hundreds, if not thousands of brilliant minds were gathered in one place to develop the most effective war machine in history. A weapon that would wipe out a city's population at the snap of a finger. However, making the parallel with what we all experienced less than 4 years ago, it could not have been worse, because it would be impossible...
Countless days of confinement in hundreds of countries. Unprecedented psychological, physical and economic consequences were part of the daily routine that we all had to endure stoically. This is why, if we analyze what we lived through, we could not call it "efficient". Whatever the different governments of the developed world may express or say, it is often impossible to eradicate the fury and frustration that millions of human beings had to endure because of collective stupidity... Multi-billion dollar companies "competed" to develop vaccines, which made them (those companies) even filthy richer than they were before...
On top of that, no one, anywhere, in a position of power, ever thought of bringing together the brightest minds in microbiology, medicine, and pharmaceutical development to solve a biological problem far less serious than a hydrogen or plutonium bomb. Next, what would have happened if some country with infrastructure, technology and isolation had assembled a group, even a tiny fraction of scientists, to solve the pandemic? Would Brazil, the United States, Italy, China, Spain, Japan have had the death rate they had? Not counting the data from the African continent or Latin America.
What does the evidence of what has happened show? Well, that selfishness, meanness and above all, stupidity are the fundamental norm of the people who run the world. It doesn't matter where you read this or where you are from or where you live. Think it through, analyze it and debate it. What's done is done. That is undeniable, but, on yet another anniversary of one of the worst collective experiences of Humanity, we can't not think. Besides, reading what is published in this niche, it is important to look beyond the apparent; beyond the usual. I leave this reflection on the table...