Fear is more contagious than any virus ‘Our little round of deeds and days will be swept away’

From redistribution of wealth to increasing our isolation and xenophobia, coronavirus will shape the future, writes Donal Lynch

AS the Aids epidemic swept through New York in the 1980s, not quite making Broadway go dark, as happened last week, but certainly dimming it, Quentin Crisp was asked what he made of the pandemic. With characteristic insouciance he replied “it’s a fad”, and was promptly ostracised in the city where he had made his home.

Aids was very serious, and it was too early then for jokes, but his reaction took in the whole picture: the dramatising of death, the media panic, the opportunistic Benetton ads. As the coronavirus mania surged through the world last week, a contagion of fear that at times seemed to far surpass the illness itself, it was difficult not to feel a little of Quentin’s irresponsible cynicism.

Politicians stood with funereal faces at lecterns, self conscious of themselves as actors in history being made.

The public, driven demented by hysterical social media, began bulk buying toilet paper in stampedes, as though we were to spend Armageddon on the toilet. Donald Trump issued a word salad that added to the feeling that we are living in some strange dream. And from Justin Trudeau to Tom Hanks, celebrities and world leaders took to social media to announce their personal involvement in the drama. If Aids had been about silence and shame, this was a pandemic to declare from the rooftops.

We were continually told it is ‘‘unprecedented’’ but, in fact, the fear of coronavirus seems to echo and amplify all the anxieties of the last few years: the suspicion of globalisation, the dread of Brexit (are the chaotic Brits up to handling such a crisis and, if not, how will that impact us?) and existential threat posed by climate change.

The virus also promised to accelerate the trend toward isolation and loneliness that, with or without a pandemic, has become a defining feature of late capitalism.

We are all in this together, we were told, and we will overcome this as a nation, but now, and in the future, that togetherness and solidarity actually looks like people even more alone in their rooms, glued, as ever, to their screens.

The economic consequences also recalled the 1980s. The stock markets plunged more than at any point since Black Monday. We are told that the virus will decimate populations of older people, who, for the last generation, have held a disproportionate amount of the wealth in society. A generational redistribution may well be a consequence of the pandemic.

And yet if pensioners were bothered by this, they hid it especially well. In search of more panicky vox pops, the BBC went to a nursing home and met people who spoke of the dreadful loneliness that is often the price to be paid for reaching a very great age. Unlike the rest of us, older people seem gifted with the perspective that there is, quite often, a fate worse than death.

Britain was mocked for its slow response and for their experts’ mention of the fact that if tough measures are taken too soon a type of ‘‘fatigue’’ may set in. For us, in the throes of our snow day-like euphoria, this seemed unthinkable. But we are notoriously bad at making difficult choices when the benefit is unclear. If, as seems likely, the pandemic drags on for the next couple of years, how disciplined will we remain?

The contagion was largely represented as an opportunity to display compassion to our fellow human beings but the lie of this was seen almost immediately as Greece turned back masses of asylum seekers. These unlucky people have found themselves trapped between a Scylla and Charybdis of war and pandemic. They are at the mercy of governments that are telling them in bald terms: we don’t want you here.

The international reaction — which teetered between hysteria and practicality — gave us other clues of what the future might look like.

The real threat to the planet is not the coronavirus but climate change, something we will again have to turn our attention to when Covid-19 is vanquished.

The complete slowdown of activity all across the western world showed that tamping down on profitable activities is possible, if the threat is grave enough.

We can slow down. We can stop even. The planet will keep spinning.

And what Yeats called ‘‘our little round of deeds and days’’ will be swept away in the tide of history.