Learning From the COVID-19 Pandemic
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905820933369 |
| Author | Elena Bergia |
18 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Italy, my
home country, before any other
in the developed world. While
my friends across Europe and the
US were still leading normal lives, in Italy
restrictions were already being introduced in
late February.
As the pandemic spread, I felt a moral
responsibility towards my distant friends.
I wanted to share with them what was
happening in Italy, hoping that it would help
them when the contagion hit their country
– and that it would help me to exorcise my
growing fears.
The content I posted on social media about
COVID-19 mirrored the virus’s escalation in
Italy. From light-hearted invitations to wash
hands frequently and not go around hugging
strangers, the tone swiftly changed to one
of panic, as hospitals in Northern Italy rapidly
lled with patients that our local health system
was not able to cope with. Within a few weeks,
any attempt to give advice became irrelevant
as the entire world started to experience the
same anguish.
Human behaviour
In the months after the pandemic began,
the world has witnessed the best of human
behaviour. In Italy, we silently applauded the
arrival of health workers from Cuba, Russia,
and even neighbouring Albania (a small
nation towards which my country has been
anything but generous). Neighbours helped
one another.
COVID-19 has also brought the darker
side of our nature to the fore, too. We have
witnessed truly irresponsible behaviour, such
as that of large numbers of people deciding
to ee heavily-aected regions in the North of
Italy to nd safety in Southern regions that had
been contagion-free up to that point. Needless
to say, this mass escape contributed to extend
the contagion to Southern Italy.
My personal selection of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
behaviour is naturally coloured by my own
Learning From the
COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 virus has changed the world. In a personal reflection,
Elena Bergia examines what the pandemic can teach us about
responsibility, entitlement and solving global problems.
predilections and idiosyncrasies. Not all the
behaviours that I regard as ‘negative’ have
contributed to the diusion of the virus.
There is, however, a basic criterion guiding my
evaluation: I regard behaviour as positive if
the main motivation behind it appears to be
the collective wellbeing or the protection of
vulnerable others; and as negative, if it seems
to be dictated mostly by a sense of personal
entitlement. When it comes to individual and
collective responses to the pandemic, these
conicting senses of responsibility and of
entitlement have been the two main driving
forces.
Quarantine is dicult. It requires the
renunciation of everything that makes us
human: physical contact and social interaction.
The ‘outside’ (anywhere that is not our own
home) becomes for many the locus of fear and
potential contagion. This is particularly dicult
if the ‘inside’ is uncomfortable too, or worse,
non-existent, as is the case with the homeless.
Our fellow humans become potential enemies,
who we often nd ourselves viewing with
suspicion.
According to the existentialist philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre, humans are ‘condemned
to be free’ because, unlike other animals,
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