My octogenarian mother was four years old when World War II began. She says those saying this pandemic is like a war are wrong. This pandemic, she says, is worse.
My mother remembers the bombing raids in the harbour area, the wailing sirens, the runs to the shelter, the unmarried uncles sweeping up the children their parents couldn’t carry. She can still vividly see the German bombers rising vertically through the clouds before they nose-dived towards their target. The sound was like nothing else.
She remembers the news arriving of the destruction of her grandmother’s mansion in Vittoriosa; its ransacking by thieves; her uncle returning with the few heirlooms he salvaged, some of them now on her shelves. She remembers her mother selling some of her jewellery for food.
When my mother said this pandemic is worse, I sat up. There’s a strong case for saying war is far worse, demanding sacrifices that we don’t have to make. All true. But my mother has in mind the sacrifices we’re making now – especially her generation – and that didn’t have to be made then.
In the war, she says, people were together – physically huddled up together in a shelter. You were never lonely. Her father read ghost stories aloud, by candlelight.
Birthdays were still celebrated together, with butter beans ingeniously used to substitute for almonds. Above all, you knew who the enemy was and when it was near. It could be seen and heard.
With this pandemic, it’s the opposite. It isolates you. You are locked up in your own home, under siege. You can’t hug your own children and grandchildren if they don’t live with you. You can’t celebrate their birthdays with them. The enemy cannot be seen. It can creep up on you in the guise of those closest to you – or indeed use you to attack those you love. A kiss might betray everyone.
My mother’s experience of the war was a protected one – protected by the innocence of childhood and by the ingenuity of adults doing their best to displace horror with a sense of adventure. Her experience of this pandemic is that of someone with no illusions, a member of the most vulnerable group.
But I’m not bringing all this up to judge which is worse, war or pandemic. My point, rather, is that there are important objective differences, for better and for worse. Thinking about this pandemic as though it were a war can be delusional and dangerous.
We are stricken, flat on our backs, in rehabilitation, counting the hours passing slowly
The analogy with war is popular because it helps the important work of persuasion. It makes it easier for politicians to issue orders concerning private behaviour – and expect them to be obeyed. It makes it possible to demand sacrifice, discipline and political priorities that upend our usual ones. It legitimises the adoption of emergency powers.
The war analogy, however, is taking on a life of its own. It is leading to a perverse interpretation of widespread illness.
Social distancing comes to legitimise national distancing, with people in border areas – whether it’s Germans and French on their border, or us on the Mediterranean frontier – viewing anyone who approaches as the potential enemy.
If you should stay in your home because danger lies beyond it, then it is easy to slip into thinking that the nation is under siege, from an enemy without. If a COVID-19 patient “fights” the disease, and emerges “victorious” – instead of submitting to illness as we do to measles, and recovering – then it’s easier to think of us needing to “fight” the strangers carrying the virus. Both the fight and the victory become a sign of character, not modern medicine.
The delusional becomes dangerous when we take a further step: when we use the language of war to define people.
The irresponsible people who flocked on beaches and boats on Easter weekend are idiots but not traitors. Helpless African immigrants, wasting away on boats adrift in Maltese waters, are not the enemy; if they’re infected by the virus, they’re victims twice over. And critics of this government’s policy not to save the immigrants are not fifth columnists.
The war analogy breaks down the moment we stop talking about common purpose and solidarity. It even stops working the way the “war” champions would like it to.
Does “war” justify not taking in immigrants? The Geneva Convention has stern things to say about the treatment of civilians and prisoners. Abandoning either to a likely death – to say nothing of making it more likely by cutting the cable of the boat carrying them – is a strong candidate for a war crime. The leaders who abet it are war criminals. Still keen on the war analogy?
There is an alternative, useful analogy. It comes from within the field of medicine itself. We are facing a socially catastrophic illness – a great accident, a terrible diagnosis, out of the blue. We have lost the use of some of our limbs. We are stricken, flat on our backs, in rehabilitation, counting the hours passing slowly.
Like all such illnesses, it is total. We have to learn how to move our limbs – the economy, the environment, our systems of health and education – all over again. We need to direct our minds to joints and nerves we never realised existed.
In the process, we must reconsider our former priorities. It should make us thankful for the strength we find and regret the weaknesses that brought us to this point.
On becoming Pope, Jorge Bergoglio described the Church as a field hospital. The pandemic has turned the entire world into one.