CONTENTS

Introductory note by Fotis Terzakis

Questions about the current pandemic through the lens of Ivan Illich

Pandemic revelations

Science

On the need for political restructuring

Conspiracy Theories

Protecting our healthcare system

The media

Ecology and pandemic

Agamben and philosophy

Is the massive and costly effort to control and limit the harm caused by the virus the only option we have? Is it merely an obvious and inevitable display of prudence to protect the most vulnerable? Or does it constitute a destructive endeavor aimed at maintaining control over that which is clearly out of control, an endeavor that will add new problems to the damage caused by the disease, problems that will be felt for a long time in the future?

There is widespread and possibly fatal loss of livelihood around the world, particularly among economically marginalized groups. Businesses that took years to build are being destroyed. Suicides, depression, addictions, and domestic violence are all on the rise. Public debt is swelling, likely to a paralyzing extent. The performing arts are being obliterated. The precious "third spaces" that sustain joy are closing. Fear is spreading among people. The homeless population is increasing. Other untreated diseases are skyrocketing due to the fixation on COVID. Many interactions that previously occurred face-to-face are now happening remotely, and this change threatens, in many cases, to become permanent. And the list goes on.

Is this a cost worth paying to prevent the transmission of the disease among healthy people, the majority of whom may have already been infected? The question, in essence, has not even been asked. We don't even know how much illness has been prevented with our draconian policies, and we may never know, as the experiment of comparing a locked-down population with a freely circulating population is impossible to conduct.

In the absence of such an experiment, much of the discussion will collapse with the elementary distinction between correlation and causation — that a lockdown was imposed and the disease receded does not prove that the lockdown was the cause of the receding.