Blaming the Virus

[Coronavirus – XV]

There is vitriol toward the virus. The virus this and the virus that.

We blame the virus as if the virus has agency, as if it is a person with a motive, and that motive is clearly to stick it to humans.

But I’m not sure if most of us fear the virus. Not in a direct sense.

The virus is not the boogie man one might think it is watching five minutes of the news. Instead, the virus is the stand-in, a target at which we can direct our bigger fear of a total system breakdown. There might not be toilet paper at the store, and we all might get a little restless staying at home for a month or two, but imagine this lasting for a year, and instead of the toilet paper shelves being empty, the entire produce and bread department are empty. Imagine if every store, including Costco, were forced to shut for six months or a year.

Our anger toward the virus is a projection of fear of what all of us know to be true: our massive for-profit-at-all-cost systems are fragile and teeter on total collapse.

I suppose we transfer this fear as a way of managing it. We shake our fist at the microscopic evil-doer because facing the fear (and the fragile system behind it) is too daunting a task.

A small target that a few specialists can shoot at is preferable to a big target we are all responsible for hitting.