Societal response to Covid-19 has been greatly diverse without any empirical evidence for such views. It ranges from casual disregard of the potential threat posed by the virus (often comparing it to the garden variety flu); to some even rejecting the severity of covid in the initial days when they compared it with the higher number of deaths caused by road accidents annually.
Some called it a manufactured strategy of China to conspire against the world; some communalized the virus by calling it Tablighi virus; some stopped eating non-vegetarian diet (chicken and eggs) fearing they may contract Corona, some attacked covid warriors (doctors, paramedics, health workers, and police) thinking they are the agents of covid; some called it the wrath of God unleashed upon them to protect the nature against unyielding greed of human societies; some called it apocalypse; some called it nature’s own way to maintain the ecological balance of the earth.
These views are dividing the world into different communities, each one either blaming the other for the crises or reviving mystical explanations to make sense of the inexplicable problem. It simply means our society has become increasingly pluralistic and diverse in its views.
This is what a French sociologist Emile Durkheim called as Anomie—a normless phase in any society without any set of coherent rules, norms or explanations that break the solidarity of societies, bringing in individualism.
The Lacking Collective Consciousness Required To Respond To COVID-19
Society no longer has a moral fabric. It has broken down into different communities with each community having its own explanation to covid. This may partly be a reason why conflicts and social evils like communal tensions, xenophobia, the racialization of coronavirus, and movements like deglobalization (breaking away from the global networks) have resurfaced in our societies.
In such testing times, it is highly important to have a charismatic authority at the helm of power regimes, a leader whose each word uttered can become a collective norm to be followed by everyone, irrespective of their caste, class, gender, race or religion. It will help us to keep ourselves united. People have started reposing their faith in state governments all over the world.
Therefore, it is the duty of the state to abide by the social contract and help the marginalized and weaker sections of society like migrant workers, transgenders, sex workers, women-headed households, and disabled for whom concepts like social distancing and work from home may be a distant dream.
Once the state takes them into confidence, it will bring forward a collective consciousness that can help us fight this virus collectively.
Otherwise, it is the individualism and misery of the underprivileged that will become the main reason behind the spread of covid. This is the time to unite and follow the norms of social distancing and lockdown religiously, to support government’s measures, to follow WHO’s guidelines on hygiene, and to donate to the poor and homeless.
These measures, if followed religiously, can bring a new form of solidarity once again- the solidarity of interdependence( Organic Solidarity- a term coined by Durkheim), which is the need of the hour. Remember that our health depends on the health of others. Therefore, we should keep our individual interests aside and think for the collectivity. In these times, we are only as strong as our weakest links.