Covid-19 has disrupted and destabilised the world. Pandemics have occurred before, but this is a new disease. We are still learning about it. We are also learning about what lockdown does to a society; not just its economy, but the psychology of ordinary people whose freedoms and liberties are suddenly and drastically reduced. Many cannot feed their families or pay for basic services. Others are burying their dead. Whether for vice or virtue, lockdown rules are increasingly being openly defied. The value of human life and livelihoods cannot be appraised in simple terms; there is no moral or ethical binary choice to make here.

Currently, we are caught in the surreal reality of limbo. The sudden and drastic changes that society rapidly underwent by going into near-total lockdown juxtaposes against the slow, day-to-day grind of how the pandemic unfolds. We know that the peak is inevitable, but we scale the exponential slopes towards the peak excruciatingly slowly. It unfolds one day at a time. And living in a society that has been brought to a standstill adds to the foreboding of the moment. We drift slowly downriver towards the heart of darkness. We have no choice but to enter into the inevitable. We can only manage our way through the catastrophe to come. We cannot stop it, at least not until we have a vaccine.

And adding to the tension of the moment, which builds slowly towards an inevitable confrontation with the inevitable reality of death; we are fed a slow drip-drip of information about our new existential threat. We know very little about it and are learning new things about it every day. This introduces a great deal of uncertainty into the decision-making equations we formulate; whether at a personal level, or whether at a city or country-level. Many “facts” about this virus have turned out not to be facts at all. The new revelations that children can indeed be severely affected by the virus and develop a condition similar to Kawasaki Syndrome – while currently only manifesting in small percentages of children who are infected – still presents cause for concern for both parents and education authorities alike.

Yet, we can learn from history if we recall similar moments in our history. This moment is reminiscent of the early discovery days of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, where so little was known about the new syndrome and how it spread. This led to speculation and stigmatisation that only served to propel and intensify the suffering of those who were infected. For those who remember; the initial discourse around AIDS presented it as a gay disease, a disease of sex workers, and a disease of the promiscuous. In the homophobic, conservative 1980s, this falsehood was perpetuated as though it would insulate the rest of society from it. Religious undertones also emerged in this discourse; those who contracted it were deserving of the punishment they received. Politicians added to the confusion.

Yet, all that this misinformation and confusion served to do was spread the condition wider and deeper into society, resulting in immense suffering, death and loss. It prevented the state and individuals from taking action to prevent it. The difficulty we are experiencing in getting people to wear masks is reminiscent of how difficult it was to convince people to use prophylactics such as condoms when HIV-AIDS began to spread. Expert opinions on masks were initially divided, and while there is now a consensus on the wisdom of wearing a mask; many ordinary people are unwilling to comply, still drawing on now outdated expert opinion to justify their unwillingness to protect others around them.

When a phenomenon is completely new, and there is no historical data, information and proven hypotheses to work from, we have no choice but to ride it out intelligently.

How we appraise the information we encounter in this moment is key to how well we will survive it. We are in a moment of information uncertainty; where there are great gaps between the knowledge we need to navigate this crisis and the knowledge we currently have. The crisis is still unfolding and, like an earthquake, there are bound to be aftershocks that we cannot accurately predict but must prepare for. In doing so, the best course to take is one that is embodied by the precautionary principle, we must undertake an inch-by-inch navigation of this virus. This requires strong resolve and leadership, and the capacity to resist the temptation to act prematurely on the basis of what we think are facts about the virus. This, apparently, is proving more difficult than ever; as politicians and other societal stakeholders enter the fray armed with premature and incomplete understanding of what is scientifically factual information and what isn’t. Our current circumstances bring to mind a famous statement by John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?”

One of the key characteristics of complex phenomena is the uncertainty associated with them, the “facts” change as the phenomenon unfolds. Most often our biggest failure in navigating the unprecedented, as Shoshana Zuboff writes in “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, is seeing it through old lenses in our desperation to familiarise the unfamiliar.  

“It’s just a mild flu”, “we must develop herd immunity”, “the virus is not airborne”, “only symptomatic people can spread the virus” or “only the elderly or those with underlying conditions are vulnerable” … all these early “truisms” have proven not to be reliable. We are desperately trying to assert control over the unknown by framing it in terms that allow us to be able to psychologically cope with the fact that we have little knowledge of how to cope with this crisis, and limited control over how it unfolds.

When a phenomenon is completely new, and there is no historical data, information and proven hypotheses to work from, we have no choice but to ride it out intelligently. We have no choice but to remain patient and cautious. We become participants in a large experiment; as we try to navigate the trajectory of the virus and reopen society, we ourselves are put at risk. Hence, we need to build a strong capacity to learn from whatever next steps we take. These steps should be incremental and planned, like any good experimental design, so that we can continue to learn and improve our capacity to respond commensurately. We must have fall-back options to revert to should our plans go awry, and we must be able to adapt our plans as new information emerges.

Looking to Sweden or China for remedies grossly overlooks the vast differences between those societies and ours. We need a solution that is sensitive to our context. We need to carefully balance our need to get society operating again with the dangers that an unknown disease presents. We must question received wisdom about an all-imposing lockdown (which is simply no longer being faithfully observed by society) as much as we question “facts” about the virus. The simple truth is that even our experts don’t fully understand what is unfolding; they are exercising their judgment in the absence of complete information.

If we are to take anything away from past experience it is this: we must proceed with a measure of caution and humility towards the unknown, lest the cost of acting recklessly (or dogmatically) renders us crippled by the unforeseen and unknowable. We are not the centre of this crisis; the virus is, and we must stay focused on that. We are all students of the present now; and must learn the new reality as it unfolds. DM

Camaren Peter (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. He is director and executive head at the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC), and is the author of Lazarus in the Multiple: Awakening to the Era of Complexity (Zero Books, UK, 2016).