How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness, and Community in Times of Global Crises - The Essay That Helped Change the Covid-19 Debate

I return to the early days of the COVID-19 health crisis and the concurrent racial uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. At that time, the world community of human beings were “all in this together.” Compassion was at an all-time high as we suffered alongside communities as diverse as Italy, Brazil, and grieving black moms in, say, Minne

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get was a slow accretion of awareness that was unlikely to achieve critical mass until our most vital time windows had closed. Then along came Covid. No, it wasn’t a climate event per se, but it was a global cataclysm that we all experienced together, viscerally, in our bodies and in our daily lives. Many of us lost loved ones. Millions died. (Over

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Fleming notes that, “When long-established systems break down they often do so in many different ways at the same time.” He acknowledges that these converging shocks “will leave nothing in our lives unchanged,” but believes this inevitable descent “can be managed, mitigated, made survivable,” and even “recognised as our species’ toughest, but great

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