The current COVID-19 pandemic has given birth to numerous noxious strains of irrationality: the claim that drinking water, by sending the virus into a person’s stomach, would neutralize the threat of infection; claims that the virus was created in a lab and released accidentally or otherwise; and the downright paranoid fear that the 5G network is either suppressing immune systems, or even spreading the virus itself.
We might speak of a pandemic of delirium. Citing Gilles Deleuze, Achille Mbembe writes that “‘there is always a Black person, a Jew, a Chinese, a Grand Mogol, an Aryan in the middle of delirium,’ since what drives delirium is, among other things, race.” It is an open question whether the pandemic would have provoked so much delirium had it originated in Europe or the United States, rather than in China. To what extent did the sense that the disease was something happening in an Orientalized imaginary that couldn’t possibly threaten the West, delay and confuse responses to it? In any case, this attempt to label COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ and the rise of hate crimes against persons of Asian descent attest to the swirling forces of the irrational in the conflagration of this social and public health emergency.
Clearly at such times we need a powerful dose of reason to counteract these forces of the irrational. In addition to debunking myths and stopping the spread of false information, we need to understand the broader causes and effects of this particular public health crisis: the connections between the spread of infectious diseases on one hand, and climate change, agribusiness, and human encroachment on wildernesses on the other; the tattered welfare and public health systems left reeling to respond to the sudden spike in demand for their services; the disproportionate burden shouldered by people of color and the poor, and so on.
