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#LockDown didn’t happen, brazilians didn’t do our homework
The social isolation rate rose to 51% in the State of São Paulo and 53% in the Capital, which is very close to the advance of Covid 19, although the numbers indicate they are stabilized at a level around a thousand deaths, the fall may be very slow if there are no ways to increase the level of social isolation, today is also an anticipation´s holiday in São Paulo.
Little by little we are drawing harsh lessons from the pandemic in Brazil, even with the government meeting with governors the already planned day after happened and in the worst possible way, the video of the ministerial meeting caused perplexity across the country and increased the distance between powers and the government. with governors and mayors. The cold also came, although it is still autumn in the southern hemisphere, and Latin America is already the new epicenter of the pandemic
While Europe is slowly returning to its new normality (Spain have any problems), and with hopes of eliminating the infection rates from falling further.
Health´s deds in the capital are running out, they reached 91% occupancy on Sunday, so either a tough measure is taken or a new breakthrough in the death curve will be inevitable.
The hope of the vaccine advances in the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca of England, its CEO Pascal Soriot affirmed this Sunday (24) that the United Kingdom will be able to have access to the vaccine in September of this year if the tests are successful, now with 10 thousand volunteers that begin to be vaccinated.
Although social isolation is below what is necessary, its effectiveness is proven, the curve that is exponential for deaths and infections, must be analyzed on a logarithmic scale (see figure), where it can be observed, decreasing inclinations that may remain on a horizontal inclination when this number stops at a level, which would be desirable to not exceed the limit of the Health system, depending on the #LockDown measure we can vary from 30 to 100 thousand deaths.
About São Paulo, the scientists evaluate, the analysis was made by researchers from USP according to the G1 portal, which instead of having a peak may have a plateau where the maximum peak remains for several days before retreating, this would also exhaust the system already at a high rate.
Some states already show an attenuation of the curve, as is the case of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catariana, but Amazonas remains serious, while Ceará and Maranhão State due to #LockDown had improvements while Pará still not even with radical isolation, and Amazonia has many problems.
The truth, the method and the life
The contemporary concept of truth, although quite attached to logicism and idealism, arises from Socrates’ maieutics, a technique for valuing dialogue for the parturition (in sense of childbirth) of ideas that are consolidated according to the concrete conditions of knowledge (it is said material, but the Greek hilé is something different from matter today) where it is questioned what is unshakable and absolute.
Among modern truths strongly influenced by Hegel, there is a high dose of subjectivism, said in the following way in Phenomenology of the Spirit: “… everything comes from understanding and expressing the true not as a substance, but also, precisely, as a subject. At the same time, it should be noted that substantiality includes in itself not only the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, but also that immediacy which is being, or the immediacy of knowledge. […] “, so it seems to refer to Being and Spirit, but it is subjective and fluid.
What resulted from Hegelianism was the formulation of the idea of Power exercised by the State and from it it will derive a large part of modern formulations, until reaching general relativism, that is, in rough terms “each one has his truth”, we return to the Greek doxa, mere opinion.
It is therefore necessary to discuss the method, but also modern methodologies are permeated with dogmatism, the mere repetition of abstract concepts, the logical-theoretical construction of formal theories, empiricism, according to Popper, the greatest modern danger, and idealistic rhetoric.
Hermeneutics initially and later the hermeneutic circle starting from Heidegger and consolidated in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method, reconstructs a modern maieutics, where not only the dialogue becomes viable, but also the possibility of a fusion of horizons becomes possible, including in dialogue with classical ontology and modern historicity.
The hermeneutic method has a profound relationship with life, Husserl’s lebenswelt, is effective for dialogue with different world views, thus it favors the relationship between people who express different cultures, and thus it is crucial for the interpretation of texts in the fields of law , theology and literature, without fundamentalism and false orthodoxy that hides error and doxa.
Hermeneutics in a pandemic relationship makes people act together even with a different visions about political, medical and social reading, it is it that helps distant discourses to show solidarity for life, the common good and in the near future outlines plans for the recovery new horizons of post-traumatic society.
#LockDown although late, in Brazil
Countries that performed a #LockDown earlier were successful not only incombating the coronavirus, as is the case in New Zealand and Slovenia, the first European country to not register any deaths by covid-19, but also had a return to new normality more early.
Even from an economic point of view it was better to take radical measures, to be able to resume earlier with social activities, as economic ones will have to be resumed gradually and in many cases they have already undergone radical changes, what are calling a new normal, cases like Sweden and South Korea (which is not true that it has not made strong restrictions on social isolation, although it is not a total #LockDown), have been isolated, but have a conscientious and organized people capable of complying with social rules.
Brazil already has some cities in the North and Northeast with a decreed #LockDown, in the Southeast it is more difficult both for the population volume and for a part of the population that insists on ignoring what stands out: the aggressiveness of the coronavirus and the death toll , in addition to the exhaustion of the health system.
We will enter a week of conflict, with another health minister leaving the central government, with measures to release the central government and restrictive measures by governors, in addition to the controversial use of hydroxychloroquine whose effectiveness has no scientific proof, in addition to the side effects.
The summary of the whole Brazilian problem is the impossibility of a rational discussion around a topic that affects the death of thousands of people, however, we continue to defend a #LockDown in the big centers, which are the main focuses of the virus in the country, so that the curve stops at a plateau, which is around 900 daily deaths, the number 485 on Sunday is underreported due to medical centers that cut staff on weekends.
We look forward to a very turbulent week, which, if not enough, is still more controversial in the political area, with a return to old practices already condemned by the society of physiologists, it is expected that governors and mayors will maintain a firm position in the face of the urgency of #LockDown
Pandemic and power
A catastrophe situation is faced with solidarity, compassion with those who suffer it directly, support for those who must face it head on, and especially with all the support of those who can and must give conditions to face the catastrophe.
It is also a new situation, which requires everyone to review actions, concepts and the lifestyle itself can and must change, those who behave trying to avoid the new routine, hinder the coping of the catastrophe and worsen it personally and socially.
All of this involves power, central powers and micro-powers, the philosopher Foucault developed the concept of biopower, that is, the control of collective phenomena from the processes of birth, longevity, mortality and fertility, already in recent philosophy Byung Chul Han created the concept of psychopower, one that through the media and communication controls the social environment.
The pandemic seems to have combined the two, and even more deeply human anthropology on its return home, uses both the issue of mortality control and communication, especially digital, for tasks, shopping and work at home, as well as the control by power.
State institutions are mobilized as soon as the Modern State enters the scene, to sympathize or to open its contradictions to the social environment, hospitals, educational institutions and mass media are all mobilized by the forces of power.
The more fraternal and more hostile faces of the idealistic model appear, in an eagerness to replace the health and power of the family’s intrinsically fraternal solidarity, spirituality and the common good. It may point to a way out or put the whole of life in check. .
Religious power is also in check, with the temples closed or they give serious and concentrated responses or they stay in the spiritual subjectivism of known phrases and buzzwords that do not explain or solve anything, the subjectivism / objectivism dualism collapses and asks for a transcendent.
In the Christian reading of John (Jn 15,15) you can read: “I no longer call you servants, but friends because the servant does not know what his Lord is doing”, and this is fundamental in a pandemic, and generates solidarity.
And for those who go beyond friendship and generate brotherly love, there is a divine promise that consoles and strengthens us at this moment (Jn 14,21): “Now whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and I will manifest myself to him ”, and they will have inner peace to face the external war that the pandemic generated.
Society in a transient moment
Life has changed all over the planet, the limitations imposed will certainly not be permanent, but some concerns that were born with health, with the invisible and with new technologies will be permanent as to the importance and transformed when taking them more into account.
The transient also observes the idealistic dichotomies of subjects and objects, or subjectivity seen as a false model of the subject, that he is devoid of materiality or substantiality, the disease is a proof of this error, or of a false objectivity, our certainties about our empirical objects have failed and continue to fail in predictions and models, the old age of uncertainty, old because it has been a “theory” since the last century, now became narrative.
The old idealistic theories, which history made them fundamentalist ideologies, have as their epicenter the idea that we must develop and advance the economic models (in the end it is always the idea of “more production”) until an even greater exhaustion, before the nature and now of life itself on the planet put at pandemic risk.
Sloterdijk warns in an interview in El País “current life does not invite us to think”, and the reason that I have a relative optimism about social distance (I prefer isolation, as society as a whole works in a network), is in the reasoning he does in the same interview: “For Husserl and his phenomenology it was necessary to get out of the impetuous time of life, the most elementary device was to always take a step back. This action allows you to become an observer. ” .
And this is the basic assumption of uncertainty, that the observer is part of the phenomenon, the idea of science that we can repeat the experiment observing the phenomenon, must take into account that the observer is part of the phenomenon, in times of pandemic, if not me prevent pandemic affect.
The whole of this epoch change, since its foreshadowing came from the two great wars, which not by chance came from the worst pandemic that humanity faced was the Spanish flu, which is a good example when there is no social distance, which lasted 2 years (January 1918 to December 1920), infected a quarter of the planet (500 million people) and killed between 20 and 50 million people.
Two untruths exist about this pandemic, first #lockDown is not good (see numbers above) and that has not changed anything, it happened right at the end of the 1st. world war (from 1914 to November 1918) that had deteriorated Europe’s sanitary conditions and economic resources, but that’s when the League of Nations model emerged (installed in January 1919, shortly after the Versailles treaty), even though it insufficient to avoid the 2nd. world war, started the discussion of the basic principles of social rights.
Also the old truths about the invisible hand of the market, laissez faire, began to change, with the provident state, and after the 2nd. world war the UN with important departments like FAO, UNICEF and WHO itself, an organization of great influence now in World Health and that gives guidelines to face the pandemic.
So, after this war that is now a war for everyone, against an invisible enemy and one can still say unpredictable, there will be changes and they must be thought out globally, but we are in a transient where the old ideas still resist seeking the previous normality of a consumerism and a society of inhuman and unequal tiredness.
Media, networks and social isolation
The three factors now combine and unveil the reality that many “theorists” pointed out, while neo-theorists stay in abstract philosophies that barely interpret the pandemic reality. One who foresaw reality, Manuel Castells who wrote “Sociedade em Rede” (Social network), explains why we were unable to foresee the virus, its potency and violence were not biologically possible to know, but the need for a health policy and education for the future did not only he pointed out, as well as Sloterdijk, Edgar Morin and many others.
About the current crisis Castells says it is necessary to understand the applause of the balconies of the buildings to doctors, nurses and health professionals and they take health more seriously, this could have been predicted and we would be in another stage, the defender of technology also blames her idolatry, but is necessary now.
He stated that the overvaluation of technology in the case of health has delayed the system as a whole, and at the same time the devaluation and misunderstanding of its application in education and at work has led to a delay that is now being tried to overcome but with a certain lag.
Social networks, whose media enhance, but are not the same thing, as is the case with tele-medicine as a secondary possibility now, as the patient with covid needs a physical place and to be assisted in person, even though decisions and online conferences are many useful.
Social isolation has boosted the use of media in the home and has now more deeply influenced the world of work, shopping and online services, and education runs after lost time, the most obvious finding is that online education is not simple and it is not the even if in person.
The global change must be made if we want to fight the virus efficiently, leave warnings on the ground and prohibit people from traveling, it is possible temporarily, and the worst favors the neo-nationalist view that led many countries to the pandemic crisis, it was thought the problem is in China.
Castells said in a recent interview: “An interdependent global system requires global governance, not necessarily global government. But nation-states resist losing their power and each uses supposedly global governance mechanisms to defend their national interests ”, despite the barriers I would say that the virus does not know that there are borders built, even with national“ isolations ”by protective barriers”.
What we need says Sloterdijk is a “global shield”, co-immunity, now with serious investments, like global co-governance and taking health, work and education seriously in a new normality, we can go back to the previous frivolity, but we will be irresponsible with the future that may come, or a new wave of this virus or its mutation, or another that is certain to come.
Fear between philosophy and reality
It is necessary to differentiate between fear, anguish and anxiety, those who blamed the “virtual” world (the virtual comes from virtus which is the root of the virtuous) must realize in the pandemic that they were not correct.
Anguish, another typical feeling in this pandemic, is a feeling linked to not belonging or not understanding the reality we are experiencing, it can be said that it is almost the opposite of fear, since it generates impropriety, that is, we do not face the problem or we postpone it or leave it by positivity, that is, we speed up life, like running from “danger”, being optimistic.
We left anxiety for the end, it is the end of a cycle, we made a post a long time ago to explain that it was not correct to attribute technology to it, there is a book called Information Anxiety (Wurman, 1989) that deals with the topic, however, in psychology it is the end of this cycle: fear, anguish (links to a system of beliefs and systems) that reaches anxiety and can lead to panic and Burnout syndrome, which feeds the cycle with fear. http://marcosmucheroni.pro.br/blog/?p=6199#.XrF_E25FzIU
The first question, therefore, is to treat the fear that is impropriety with ownership, that is, to understand what causes it, to make it conscious and with this the next stage of anguish can be blocked, because we will not escape from reality, the idea of hiding or ignoring facts is what fuels this cycle.
We don’t need to be specialists or in the case of medical pandemics, to understand that some measures are necessary, that without them we get into anguish and this can lead to panic stress, aware that we even face the problem of hospitalization and the social difficulties caused by isolation .
This also explains why people who do only primary reasoning fall into finding fictitious enemies (inappropriate that leads them to the anguish of being unanswered) and in the last stage when the fatalities arrive they lead to panic or the Burnout syndrome, so it makes sense that some cheerleaders who go out on the streets asking for an end to “isolation”, is panic.
As it is the beliefs and systems that take the last step, I treat the religious problem, which has nothing to do with spiritualities that seek balance, and even in suggestions from psychologists you will find do self-analysis and have self-control, good spirituality helps, religious fanaticism harms and accelerates the process.
Peak crisis and do not rush the future
We are at the peak of the crisis and we are already talking about the post-traumatic situation, there are many doctors and sociologists who want to hurry up an analysis, China emerged from the crisis, Europe begins the new stage in 3 distinct and elongated phases and Brazil and countries from the southern hemisphere winter is approaching.
The analysis of the curve and the peak made by DataScience shows that the social distance was worth it, however, governmental hesitations and the approach of winter may even if the curve flattens, the data indicate that yes, it may be lengthened, that is, the “new normality” will be delayed.
The name “new normality” already excludes all analyzes that indicate any impossibility of returning to the previous stage, that is, an agitated and unprotected life, what Edgar Morin calls everyday “intoxication”, and an accelerated economic development, with its added price.
The moment in Brazil and I believe that most countries in the southern hemisphere is to create even tighter conditions to disadvantage “social relaxation”, in a way even understandable since the quarantine if it were even 40 days, it would be running out, everything indicates not. To further complicate political crises, in the Brazilian case, they deepen and seem to have no end, the problem of governability and political instability accelerates and deepens the health crisis.
Concentrating our efforts and focusing only on the health crisis, the economic and the social exist, however, they should not justify deaths and crisis in health care, we must consider that we are at the upper level of the curve, and the numbers seem to stabilize, they are high, it is true, if if we take #lockDown seriously we could already be seeing a way out, but that’s not the case.
One of the consequences of the pandemic is the so-called Kawasaki Syndrome, in England for example, the Health System (NHS, the acronym in English) has already detected an increase in the number of children with multisystemic inflammation, gastrointestinal problems and physical inflations.
In the middle of spring, but already with signs of summer, Europe will gradually return to activities, and we will be able to see how the social and economic problems will be faced, here is the future.
The pandemic in Brazil and a hope
We started the week with a scenario not only of suffering, it has been happening since the beginning of the world pandemic, but of political turbulence and misinformation about the pandemic.
Through graphics and hard numbers we tried to show, even to a lay audience and except for those who are in health, we are all a little lay, we showed the rise of the curve and that showed no signs of easing (which would be starting a less steep climb) nor of cooling.
The information and intervention policy of the Minister of Health that came out was encouraging, but the current policy, in addition to showing a cold´s numbers and “betting” on an easing of the curve, there is still no clear intervention in the disease, which is treated as a fatality.
We continue to defend #LockDown for Brazil, but the policy is to bet that the peak will be in May, without any convincing analysis for this.
There are signs in Europe that the peak has passed, the leader of Brexit (leaving England from the European community), British Prime Minister Boris Johnson infected with invite-19 thanked two foreign doctors who, in his own words, “saved my life” .
The pandemic has already changed the way and culture of how we think, media leaders and thinkers do not change, they are defending their establishment discourse that yield expensive lectures and the cultural and social misinformation we live in, I have already mentioned two thinkers, Edgar Morin who he told L´Obs that our “toxic” way of life is changing, and Byung Chul Han (in daily El Pais), who showed why the oriental culture that is disciplining (do not confuse with the authoritarian) favors the fight against the pandemic.
We must always have hope, and the greatest thing we can have in these pandemic times is what humanity has always dreamed of, a homeland for all, care for the “common home” and the gathering of religious leaders: Muslims, Christians, Druze and Jews in Jerusalem (photo above) is a sign that there is something changing and that the change deepens.
The ascent to the Divine, how to live in crisis
It is in these moments of crisis that the human nature of God and the divine nature of man are discovered, hands that save, that help, that show solidarity and that point out unthinkable paths, but where is God, what does this pandemic say with so many people dying .
Edgar Morin and Patrick Viveret wrote “How to live in a time of crisis”, the Brazilian translation is from 2013 and the original French version of 2010, so they are not talking about this crisis, knowing Morin and reading the book we realize that it is that night of thought that we speak (see post).
Consistent with our thinking, he goes against ambiguities, and makes a comparison between Pascal and Descartes right from the start: “Pascal brings a sense of ambiguity to him, the human being brings the best and the worst in himself. Descartes not, we must be Pascalians” (pg. 10) and if we allow the religious sense also Easter beings, to pass from death to life, and to live in crisis.
There is a deep thought in Morin, which he has expressed in other ways, which in this book is more surprising: “I would like to propose, regarding the historical period that we have entered, a reading close to that of the Apocalypse, in the original sense of the expression (sic), not of catastrophe, but of revelation, of a critical time of humanity with itself, allowing it to work the essentials ”(pg. 34), to accuse him of being religious would be ignorance and hopeless, bad reading.
The model of the crisis we live in is called DCD, “deregulation, unrestrained competition, displacement*”, in a note explaining the latter, it is manufacturing production displaced from one country to another, concentrated in China, for example, the case of necessary equipment and masks to fight coronavirus.
This model with economic foundations, is called by Karl Polanyi “market society” and which is currently called by Joseph Stiglitz “merchant fundamentalism” (p. 36), the authors give the diagnosis of the crisis: “formed by this double excess/malaise ”(p. 40).
They also give two essential and surprising diagnoses, saying that bin Laden, who was a Muslim, cited the Satan of the Apocalypse to refer to Rome, and says “what is the great strength of the prophets? It is precisely to say that the question of inhumane is inward” (p 58), “The idea that others are evil prevents us from treating our own inner barbarism” (idem).
The entire chapter 3 of the evangelist John is marked by a revelation, which is made when walking with men, and shows how the divine reality of the Risen Jesus is contextual and adapted to the world, however “the one whom God sent speaks the language of God “(Jo 3, 34), and it is clear that a good part of the religious discourse does not express this, but only conflicts in the human nature.
MORIN, Edgar; Viveret, Patrick. 2013. Como viver em tempo de crise (How to live in times of crisis), Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, Brazil.