CONSEQUENCES INEVITABLE

We all are facing a new global challenge: the coronavirus pandemic, which has changed the lives of billions of people. Our reality will not be the same again. The new virus nicknamed COVID-19 has become one of the most frequently repeated terms in world media and social networks, which pledge plenty of global changes ranging from a revision of the traditional structure of states to personal habits. It is difficult — yet necessary — to consider such statements without emotion. Above all, we need to remain unbiased in our analysis of the current situation.

COVID-19: words and numbers

The greatest danger of COVID-19 is that it occurs unexpectedly. Also, it doesn’t show any clear symptoms and mechanisms of distribution, yet causes serious complications that lead either to death or physical disabilities. Still, it would be overly streched to say that the coronavirus is the worst disease ever occurred in the world. As of writing this article, there were less than 3 million infected in the world, of which a little more than 190 thousand died. According to Worldometer, this year alone more than 4 million people died globally due to various infectious diseases; the number of HIV-infected reached 47 million with more than 500K died, about 2.5 million people died from cancer, and more than 300K from malaria. Also, 2 million people die every year from tuberculosis and 1, 3-3 million — from malaria. That’s why it would be strange to call the coronavirus pandemic the most terrible disaster that humanity has ever faced. At least for now. In terms of death toll and suffering, it is enough to recall the events of the last century with two world wars and dozens of local “cold” showdowns.

However, the overall picture will be different if we take into account the potential victims of the economic crisis, which triggered the pandemic due to border closure, quarantine and other deterrence measures. For the first time in many decades, China's economy — the second largest in the world — has declined significantly. The economies of the USA, the EU, many Asian countries, and Russia are in a difficult situation, and the number of unemployed is growing rapidly everywhere. A global humanitarian catastrophe is also one of the widely discussed topics. Thus, the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, predicted a world hunger of biblical proportions in just a few months. It is expected that if states do not take vigorous measures, the number of people starving from famine will double in the world by the end of 2020.

Yet the economic crisis just triggered the pandemic, rather than caused it, contrary to what many claim. After all, the crisis was approaching us even before COVID-19, and the general rehearsal took place in 2008-2009. Last October, the former executive director of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, predicted the world “financial Armageddon”, and other experts at various levels constantly pointed to such disturbing factors as debt overload, low and negative interest rates, contradictions caused by globalization, and trade wars.

In September last year, Forbes magazine noted that there were few options for the development of events. “Either the change in the model of capitalism and the transition to new production technologies to create new values, or the disintegration of the world economy into separate semi-isolated zones. Either a world war that will nullify current obligations, or a world revolution due to a terrible social crisis that will redistribute the benefits of modern civilization”. It was expected that the reason for the crisis could be anything, for example, the bankruptcy of a large investment bank, which could trigger a quick start of the economic crisis thanks to globalization processes. What no one expected was that the trigger would be a pandemic... However, again, it was not the coronavirus pandemic that affected oil-producing countries when they could not agree on production cuts. Although, of course, the quarantine in most of the world has significantly accelerated the lowering of oil prices.

Also, let us not blame the virus for the food crisis that has always been there. Today, 820 million people are already suffering from hunger in the world, 1.3 billion people do not have the opportunity to eat well and about 800 million people do not have access to safe drinking water. These data were published in a joint report for 2019 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program and the World Health Organization (WHO). Apparently, these figures were previously insufficient to speak of a humanitarian catastrophe or famine of "biblical proportions." Now the people of the West can join the starving in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and this radically changes the situation. However, only at the mental, and certainly not at the actual level.

We are on our own

Meanwhile, the apocalyptic mood also reigns in geopolitics. It is noted that in a crisis, almost all the states of the world have demonstrated the principle of individuality, when "every man is for himself." It is also noted that the EU is on the verge of collapse, the United States is on the verge of a civil war, and globalization can already be buried. The statements are serious, but by no means new. After all, we have long seen and felt the same ‘individuality principle’ both at sessions of the UN General Assembly and the UNGA Security Council. As for Europe, it began to show its disunity a few years before the coronavirus - during the migration crisis. In addition, it is probably worth recalling that in January Brexit finally took shape, manifesting the escape of Britons from Brussels.

Also, in recent years, Europe has seen an increase in the number of nationalist and populist politicians. Therefore, the EU’s reaction to the coronary crisis did not really surprise anyone. Moreover, it seems that even greater squabbles are expected ahead, when the Europeans will begin to specify the details of the restoration of their economy. No one should be surprised by the intensification of civil confrontation in the United States, which has been living for four years divided into those who are for and against Trump. Naturally, the discontent of each of the parties only worsened under quarantine, when millions of unemployed appeared in the country at once and all the problems of the American health care system crawled out. Every presidential campaign argues about it with foam at the mouth, but they don’t decide anything significant.

An outbreak of coronavirus only pushes some processes. For example, in mid-April, Trump announced that the United States would suspend immigration for two months due to the negative economic consequences of the pandemic, but if you recall the attitude of the current head of the White House towards migrants and the fact that he was recently planning to build a wall on the border with Mexico, everything begins to fit into the familiar pattern.

Digital concentration camp?

There is nothing new in rumours about the inevitable digitalization of all areas of our lives, including the wider use of IT, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, Big Data. It was not the coronavirus pandemic that set this process, although it significantly accelerated it, especially when many human activities were becoming increasingly popular online. Is it possible and worth resisting this process? Of course not. Like everything new, it can and should cause people to reject and even fear with aggression, but as a result, everyone will have no choice but to just begin to adapt to the new reality.

Remarkably, the introduction of individual nano-chips is also associated with digitalisation, which is almost completely negatively perceived by all and compared with the digital concentration camps. Opponents of nano-vaccines, immune IDs and digital certification claim that they will allow for total control of people. According to Russian media, on April 17, the State Duma adopted a bill on the establishment of the Unified Federal Information Register (EFIR), which includes complete information about each citizen. The register includes e-name, date and place of birth, gender, marital status, all family connections, information about education, places of work, health status. This doesn’t seem to be a good news for ordinary citizens, but is it something new? Definitely not. Although the fears over the influence of chips on the mental health and human behavior are understandable, then the fears about total control seem a bit naive and even ridiculous. After all, almost all of the above data is available to any border guard service when we cross the border, or to bank employees when we get a loan.

Apparently, data about our education, military and health background is not a secret to the state. As for individual movements, there is no need for chip injection at all, as most of us have long been ‘bearing’ these chips when we have completely voluntarily shared information about ourselves with Google’s search engine, which can provide information about everything from our phobias to sexual preferences. In addition, we conduct electronic correspondence, store our photos in cloud services, allow various programs to count our steps and track movements, play online games, participate in various marathons, scan our own faces to determine our national affiliation, leave comments and likes and more. Thus, anyone who has a couple of computers, a tablet, two smartphones and a GPS-navigator at home or his car should rethink before talking about the fear of chip injection as a means of surveillance by the Big Brother.

Let’s eat Bill Gates

Seriously, why have so many people suddenly become critical about this issue now, when the locked down citizens are required to get a QR code for each exit from the house and when psychological stress is at historical high? In such an environment, the emergence of conspiracy theories seems simply natural. Suddenly, it turned out that the most serious of these versions are associated with the name of Bill Gates. In fact, the billionaire was not even hiding anything about his motives. On the contrary, it seemed that he did everything possible and impossible to become an object of criticism of all the conspiracy theorists. You also have probably heard those stories about Gates leaving his brainchild of Microsoft in order to create the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his financial support to WHO, or seen his shots from the televised TED conference back in 2015, where he warns the mankind about a virus that can threaten the lives of tens of millions of people around the globe. Then, Mr. Gates held an event in New York in October 2019 called Event 201 on the topic of a possible pandemic of the coronavirus with catastrophic consequences.

In addition, various sources write that three years ago, Gates founded a public-private partnership called ID2020, which until 2030 is tasked to provide all people with a digital ID. The project involves Microsoft, Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Cisco Systems. Well, given all of the above, it is difficult to resist the temptation to suspect Mr. Gates indeed. Moreover, from the philistine, these suspicions reached the level of Fox News or US Secretary of Justice William Barr. In modern language, Gates “hype” as he could, paired with the coronavirus, getting into the tops of Facebook and YouTube statistics.

The version with Gates also received a continuation on the part of US President Donald Trump himself. On April 14, he accused WHO, with whom Gates closely interacts, of absolute lack of professionalism in combating the crisis caused by the outbreak of coronavirus and misinformation regarding its spread in China. Trump believes that data from China has been greatly underestimated. As a result, Washington, which transferred about $ 400 million to organizations in 2019, suspended its funding. The media has indicated that WHO is under significant Chinese influence. “An important UN body, the World Health Organization, sometimes gave priority to the interests of China to save its reputation, instead of pursuing its primary task: to best protect the world community from health risks,” wrote German magazine Der Spiegel.

Meanwhile, the EU, Germany, Russia and China sharply criticized the measures taken by the US president, while the opposition media said Trump “hunted for a new scapegoat… trying to devolve responsibility on to someone else” in his slow response to the spread of coronavirus in the US. As before, everything boils down to Trump's policy and his relationships with Beijing and international organizations. Therefore, the mutual exchange of accusations between the US and China regarding the artificial origin of the virus did not come as a surprise. Political experts still refrain from commenting on the artificial origin of the virus, which may take the discussion to a completely different level, that is the intentional use of COVID-19 as a bacteriological weapon.

Fake news pandemic

Obviously, Bill Gates, biological weapons and mass injection of nano-chips are not the only favourite topics of conspiracy theorists related to the origin of the virus. Versions vary from the introduction of the 5G network to extraterrestrial aliens fed up with constant fighting and cursing of human beings. Yet another version claims that the virus was spread by an eco-terrorist group led by Greta Thunberg to reduce the world's population and harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Conspiracy theorists also blame the global elites who have long nourished a plan to reduce the world population to the “golden billion” and the Big Pharma — a group of pharmaceutical companies eagerly expecting to profit from the sale of vaccines. Some experts even say that the collapse of the global economy is skillfully masked by the coronavirus.

The coverage of fake news in the world media and social networks is so overwhelming that it really looks like there is a pandemic and challenge humanity has never faced before. Psychologists warn that cataclysms, like an outbreak of a new disease, severely traumatise people at the level of subconsciousness. But most importantly it all goes on online for the first time in human history. So, perhaps, we will see the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis for a long period. And this is perhaps one of the most concise forecasts that can be made now.

We can also assume serious changes in health care, epidemiology, as well as hygiene in general. Otherwise, if different types of new coronaviruses appear at least once every five years, humanity can remain in a lockdown for almost forever. Therefore, many experts say that doctors, scientists, employees of emergency commissions and the military should be valued and paid at least as much as athletes or movie stars. It is difficult to believe that this comes true in the foreseeable future but let’s wait and see... The attitude to the protection of environment will also change. After all, if a reasonably small challenge such as this one can put the Earth on halt and threaten the world economy, then we can expect more threating problems of global magnitude if something much more serious happens, such as a series of powerful floods, droughts or earthquakes.

On the other hand, for now it is difficult to predict the future of the political structure of states and the functions of international organizations. Will the world slide to anarchy, feudalism, dictatorship, or, conversely, will it become more democratic? Is the time of globalization coming to an end and the “era of the unthinkable" beginning, as the French president Emmanuel Macron predicted? We will likely get answers to these questions only after the consequences the economic crisis and the expected losses for each country become a bit more certain. In the meantime, welcome to the beginning of the COVID-19 show!