This week, Italy's first book on the Corona virus, entitled "Covid-19 .. The Virus of Fear", was released this week and distributed to newsstands in the country.
The Italian magazine "Papillon" said that the new book is the first of its kind that deals with the consequences of the pandemic, and gives an accurate picture of what happened in the world during the past few months.
This book showed how the subject of the pandemic took everything from the "patient number zero" and the city of Wuhan, which is the epidemic center, through the testimonies of the Italian health workers, to the hopes of finding a vaccine.
The authors - infectious disease specialist Massimo Androne and psychotherapist Giorgio Nardoni - addressed the history of previous viruses and epidemics such as Ebola and SARS, and spoke about bats and false news, and even geopolitics and future hopes.
According to this book, we all represent the "sick number zero" in this story, in reference to people who unknowingly contributed to the spread of the dangerous paranoia on the five continents, due to the irresponsible behavior of the few in exchange for the courage of many, the first of which was the doctors.
The book considers that the generation that is experiencing the experience suffers from a loss of the ability to control its daily life due to an invisible evil, considering that this generation also risks causing science to retreat to an inexplicable marginal role, and because of bad habits leads the person himself to perish.
This unintentionally threatens to place the "public number zero" culturally according to the description of the book, which criticizes practices that came at the expense of the health of the individual and the health of the planet, and the book discusses what he considered arrogance and arrogance to what can be described as a "deified" human or a "deity person" who is believed The creator of the material universe, but it is only a being highly influenced by what is going on, as the Italian magazine put it.
A storm of chaos
The magazine stated that the book focuses specifically on the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Lodi, Milan and all the Italian provinces affected by the virus, but it is a tribute to all of Italy's population in general. The book was published at a time when the emergency due to the Corona virus appears to be diminishing, but the panic sparked by the global health warning remains in place, given that its consequences were severe in social, political, economic and health terms.
On the social level, collective hysteria has generated new irrational biases and increased xenophobia.
Politically, the epidemic has destabilized the leadership of the Communist giant (China), the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and many other countries, not to mention the heated debate within the Italian government.
As a global virus, it also affected the economy, as its negative effects appeared in every sector, with the structural foundations of the modern trade and financial system collapsing. Various data also indicate that the near future does not appear rosy.
However, we do have some hope and optimism, such as the fact that the threat of a pandemic is contained. Today, thanks to the sacrifices made by the most affected countries, such as China, Italy, Iran and South Korea, the governments of all countries have the tools to study and contain the disease, and to ensure that it does not spread again or at least mitigate it.
The magazine pointed out that the book shed light on the stages and episodes that led to an "unexpected international chaos" that severely affected the lives of billions of people around the world by risking escaping the domination of the lifestyle of contemporary societies, which although they live in the most advanced era of Technologically speaking, they hesitated in the face of what was ultimately a storm or violent impact that undermined the habits of the world's population.
It should be noted that the cover of the book is a painting entitled "The Nurse with a Pearl Earring", drawn by the artist Lady Bey, and donated its proceeds to the Red Cross.
Italian Controversy
Parallel to the outbreak of the pandemic in Italy, which has shifted to its European center, the philosophical and intellectual controversy has continued to rage among Italian intellectuals.
The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben believes that the pandemic - which poses the greatest threat to human security since the Spanish flu a century ago - makes our common humanity a potential security threat, as the enemy inside us this time is not an external threat, as people see each other as expected carriers of the virus.
Agamben wrote an article titled "Inventing a Pandemic" in which he condemned "the totally insane, irrational and desperate state of emergency in responding to the alleged Coronavirus epidemic." He also blamed the authorities for spreading a state of fear and terror "and declaring an exceptional state of emergency that included severe restrictions on the right to movement and the suspension of the normal conditions of life and work."
The author and professor of Italian political philosophy, Massimo de Carrolls, believes that the measures of prohibition and social divergence are worrying.
De Caroles continues that the crucial point is to indicate whether the measures are temporary or whether we are witnessing instead a general test of what would become normal life in the societies of the near future.
The Italian academic justifies his doubts "by the fact that the destruction of social ties and control in the name of" public health "certainly did not come with the emerging virus. For at least a century, modern social mechanisms tend to create a society based on isolation, where the spontaneity of social life is seen as an obstacle or even a threat For the stability of the system. "
Italian philosopher and writer Sergio Penfinotto commented that the panic that befell his country was essentially a political choice, because in an era in which great democracies produce "hideous leaders", international organizations - such as the World Health Organization - are taking decisions that will correct the whims of new fascism in today's democracies, According to his article, translated from Italian by the European Journal of Psychoanalysis.
The Italian philosopher notes that in the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, political power acted in exactly the opposite way, hiding the epidemic, because in most cases the countries concerned were in a state of war, and the flu was called “Spanish” simply because at that time, and only in Spain - which was not In case of war - the media reported on the disease, which appears to have originated in the United States.