Is this an “infectious” Era?

  

Around the middle of the 20^th century, the discovery of antibiotics caused an enthusiastic mood about the resolution of infectious diseases. But, in the last decades of the same century, the agents of this kind of disease spread with new strength. Antibiotics became more and more powerful against these agents, even losing their capacity to exterminate those bacteria. At the same time, opportunistic infectious agents gained focus together with the spreading of the HIV virus.

During the first two decades of the 21st century those same diseases kept their presence, and other viruses infiltrated into the human communities: SARS, MERS, H1N1 and other variations of this kind. Finally, Covid-19. But this one specifically could be the last straw of this New Era that we could call “after-postmodern”. While Science is advancing in many directions, Covid-19 caused a dangerous surprise, and maybe not the last one…Under the circumstances of aggression to the environment, new epidemics, and pandemics can start suddenly…

So, there are several types of “infectious agents” beyond the microbes, located in the human heart and its greed for natural resources and human disrespect…

There is a hope that the solution appears in this same Era.    

Environmental and viral issues for the years to come

 

     The current pandemic is one of several epidemic viruses that occurred during the 21^st Century linked to balance rupture between mankind and Nature. 

It seems that we live at the risk of a continuing menace of new diseases from this kind of rupture if no one does something to change it. 

For now, we have the Paris Agreement. It is necessary, but maybe not enough. To get a better result, the nations must do a longer step, and the small communities must compromise to make changes. Consumerism must change. 

The mankind and contemporary living must change to a new vision of life and needs. But everything concerning to Art must improve, not only Science. We are not talking only about a biologic surviving, but of a true life and living as humanity with all its characteristics. Then, maybe, a new time of post-post-modern era comes.  

 

    

                                                                                                                 

The pandemic and the end of postmodern paradigms

     The postmodern times, between 1950 and 2001, had its paradigms: pragmatism, efficiency, bilateralism (and in the nineties, ‘unilateralism’), results. What was out of those, was less important, maybe secondary, or tertiary. Even ethics was submitted to all these things.

     After two decades of several problems we culminate with this “pandemic”. The pandemic was and is a kind of terrifying surprise for the supposed “power of science”. Everything must be reorganized in some way that we do not know yet. For while, it seems better than the Spanish Flue, but someone warns us that this is only the “tip of the iceberg”. It means that the real problem is the global warming and the invasion of the wild environment.

     Anyway, after these two decades of transition, it seems that the really “after-postmodern” times are coming. There are other names for this time: “post-postmodern”, “hypermodern”, etc. As we can see in history, the edge between the eras is not a dot, or a line. It is a blurry region where we can see factors of a period that is ending, and factors of another period that is coming.

The after-postmodern “new normal”.

We used to write here that some thinkers talked about “big transition” is going on. Erwin Laszlo wrote in the end of 20^th century about a “macro shift”. Under Thomas Kuhn concepts we can think about paradigm changing. But probably none of them thought about a pandemic like this one. Even fiction writers did not imagine that kind of epidemic. In some way has a mild characterization, in other way is powerful to keep each one apart and bring an all new way to live together, or “almost together”. For while there is no scenario to imagine. It is constructed day by day, everyday changing, in a new Bauman liquid concept…  

“The End of Normal” and Pandemic

     In 2014 James K. Galbraith publicized a book named “The End of Normal – The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth”. He wrote that the world economy cannot grow anymore under the same objectives as gross domestic product, work, jobs and stock exchange. All of that was considered the “normal paradigm”. He said about the need of a balance among natural resources, consumerism and excessive accumulation: a new paradigm.

     Nowadays, under the pandemic of Covid-19, someone is talking about “a new normal” that is coming, and that many things are going to change. Maybe “The End of Normal” of Galbraith has something in common with “the new normal” after the pandemic…

Pathocenosis and pandemic of Covid-19

     The physician and historian Mirko Grmek elaborated the concept of “pathocenosis”. Pathocenosis is about several factors that work together to the inception of a disease/ilness/sickness. These are social, cultural, economic, politic and anthropological factors.  

     It is important to explain the difference of the three words: disease, ilness and sickness. “Disease” is the biological or biomedical aspect of the unhealthiness. “Ilness” is about how the individual patient feels or live his disease. “Sickness” is the communitarian aspect of the disease; it is about how a social or cultural group live this disease.

     The nowadays pandemic of coronavirus is a pandemic of the after-postmodern times.

     The Contemporaneous Era started with the French Revolution (1789) e its first consequences. The first part of this Era some can call “The Modern Period” (different of the Modern Era between 1453 and 1789). In a general way, each historical period has a dominant bias and its opposite.

     At the Modern Period happened the Industrial Revolution, and a great development of Technology and Science. At the same time the Romantic Movement was a kind of opposite. During this Period, a kind of Ethics based on a principle elaborated by Thomas Aquinas gained space: “the end doesn’t justify the means”. It signifies that we cannot use any mean to achieve an objective. This objective cannot be sovereign over anything. The way to achieve this objective must be ethic.

     In the Modern Period several idealisms progressed based in ethical principles (we cannot forget that all was not flowers). In the transition of 19^th and 20^th centuries, in the so called “Belle Époque”, it was a “time of certainties”, with a growing optimism about scientific discoveries and social development. But, the First World War (1914-1918) caused a strong cut of certainties and even a kind of ingenuity about the supposed “last war”, or “the war of wars”. The post war world became a “world of uncertainties”, like, for example, “the lost generation” of Ernest Hemingway. And this vacuum and emptiness created space for totalitarianism. So, the Nazism conducted to the Second World War. In those days, idealistic people, like, for example, the French Resistance, won the war. The world was reconstructed step by step. In this environment The World Health Organization was founded in 1948.

     With the economic progress, in 1950 started the Postmodern Period that endured until 2001/2008. This Postmodern Period saw, gradually, that ethics and idealisms became secondaries to the objectives and search for results. From 1980, subjectivity lost value to objectivity. Predominated pragmatism, efficiency and results, instead of ethics, subjectivity and arts in a deep meaning.

     Between 2001, the year of the WTC fall, and 2008, the year of the start of Economic Crisis, it happened a transition to the Post-postmodern Period. At this time, it started a decadency of pragmatism, efficiency and results as dominant factors, and Ethics as a central question came back, together with a revaluation of subjectivity. All these things are is coming on the way.

     In all these referred periods, medicine passed through several phases. It was not the same between 1800 and 2020. So, the society changed, the survival time for human being expanded, technological resources progressed, and other factors changed.

     In nineteen seventies, people lived less. The medical resources were good, but less than now. It was difficult to find a surgeon that operated a patient with 70 years old, because of the great risk. Today, age is not anymore an isolated factor for decide to operate or not. In the same way, it was uncommon to intubate a patient above 70 years old, because of the risk, and the ventilators were less sophisticated than today. If in those days it appeared a pandemic like that of coronavirus, with a survival tax less than now, it would be different the focus about intubate severe cases. Although the coronavirus was already known, there were less technology to identify “the new coronavirus”.  

     In 2020, people live more. In this pandemic, aged people are those that suffer more. But the technology advanced enough to intubate them. Intubation for aged people is not anymore a sentence of death. So, indication of intubation is now a responsibility of medicine with these patients.  Beyond them, there are more people with chronic disease than in nineteen seventies, not just because the population augmented but also because medical resources can keep these people alive for more years. The medicine has responsibility with these patients too.

     The pathocenosis of the Covid-19 implies in all complexity of factors present in 2020, that make this pandemic to be a pandemic with its rules of quarantine and isolation.

     Some people with a mentality of 1960/1970 years think with the medicine of those days, with the society of those days, seeing socio-cultural ghosts of those days.

     Positive and negative factors always were present in the history of mankind. The Middle Ages were not the Dark Ages, as The Illuminist Period was not the Light Age. The Darkest century for mankind, for instance, is the 20^th century.  

     In 2020, there are also negative and positive factors, but medicine is obliged to do what it must do, with its ethic imperatives. We used to say that there is not disease, there is the ill person. Diseases change, pathocenosis change. The person that suffers is always present.

  

          

After-postmodern pandemics?

We wrote already about a kind of century cycle for pandemics in modern times like the Spanish Flue (1918) and Coronavirus (2020), this one in after-postmodern era, that has some “modern” characteristics, mainly the communication and human contact.

In after-postmodern times, specifically, maybe there is a cycle of nearly ten years, when we think about SARS, H1N1 and coronavirus.

We cite again the word “pathocenosis” proposed by Mirko Grmek. Pathocenosis is about the circumstances and social context that participate in some way in the conditions for a disease to appear. In that conditions we also can say that we talk of “illness” and “sickness”, not just disease. The meaning of “illness” is more about how the patient experiences its own disease, meanwhile “sickness” is how the community experience that same disease.

There are several factors that generate a pandemic, maybe not just biological factors. Altogether, biological, sociological, anthropological, cultural factors can stablish conditions for a cycle for pandemics: from time to time, different things happening together culminate in a pandemic.

Is there a cycle of modern pandemic?

In the beginning of 20^th century the Modern Period achieved a point of linking among countries all over the world that never had before, mainly after the flights became easier.

So, in 1918 it happened the Spanish flu.

Now, in 2020 we have the Covid-19.

The physician and historian Mirko Grmek proposed the concept of “pathocenosis”. This concept is about spatial and temporal evolution of diseases associated to other factors.

Before and between these two pandemics there were others. But maybe not with some kind of similarities of these two inside a kind of pendulum of time around a “pathocenotic” century cycle.   

After-postmodern crises

Someone says that we are still in an economic crisis since 2008.

Maybe yes, but maybe it is more.

We see some debris of the postmodern era still surrounding us.

Anyway, there are not fixed limits between eras.

And, After-postmodern Era is not a new paradise, even with some signals of human progress.

But the human shadows, as Carl Gustav Jung could say, remain present.

These apparently “new” words “dystopic” and “disruptive” existed already in concepts in the Postmodern Era.

So, we still see ethical crises, existential crises, human crises and a strong environmental crisis. We used to focus on the economic matter because of its several consequences and links, but it is time to look at these links and put them also in the center of the situation.