The Legacy of COVID-19: Increased Self-Interest or Increased Solidarity?

Authored by Amanda Hunt, PhD, (ABD) Medical Anthropology

August 14, 2020

The piece you’re about to read is from Klick Health’s Life (Sciences) After COVID-19 series, a collection of expert perspectives designed to inform and inspire the life sciences community for the coming changes and opportunities we anticipate as a result of this global health crisis.

The Insight

"The hope of reason lies in the emancipation from our own fear of despair.” —Max Horkheimer

In early March, David Brooks wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he warned “You may not like who you’re about to become.” The observation was based on a rather harrowing amount of evidence from past plagues and epidemics which demonstrate that the impulse toward self-protection fundamentally precludes all impulses toward solidarity. It is the first and last line of defense against an invisible threat potentially carried by friends, neighbors, and loved ones. The U.S. response to the Spanish flu was marked by an astonishing absence of reflection, largely because of a collective sense of shame—people abandoned any semblance of community in a bid for survival.

Writing of the 1663 bubonic plague in London, Daniel Defoe wrote: “This was a time when every one’s private safety lay so near to them they had no room to pity the distresses of others…The danger of immediate death to ourselves, took away all bonds of love, all concern for one another.”

The cornerstone of the American dream is grounded in the myth of the self-made man. The idea that the individual is paramount. There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the individual and celebrating individual freedoms. But, as French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, the Achilles’ heel of individualism lays in the narrow centering on the self, a sort of solipsism that denies the experiences of others and results in an absence of concern for others or society. In the absence of a larger social narrative, we develop an anemic sense of community and retreat into ourselves.

Perhaps inevitably, it is in times of unprecedented hardship that the American fantasy of the individual often unravels. As writer Rebecca Solnit has documented in A Paradise Built in Hell it is communities that respond to disaster—with an abundance of altruism and resourcefulness.

There is evidence that it is communities, not individuals, that succeed. However, this civic temperament is most evidenced when there is a literal observable threat. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other examples of this sort elicited remarkable displays of courage and generosity.

The exception to this rule is typically pandemics. And in some respects, this is not surprising—in pandemics, the invisible threat is literally ‘the other’. We are encouraged to batten down the hatches and secure a perimeter around ourselves for our very survival.

But COVID-19 may prove to be an exception to this rule. We have seen surprising evidence of an outpouring of community and solidarity that is anathema to self-protection. There is promise in this. Not the foundation for a sunny optimism, but rather the foundation for hope. As Senator Cory Booker recently put it, “Hope right now in America is bloodied and battered, but this is the kind of hope that is successful. It’s hope that has lost its naïveté.”

Will our experience with COVID-19 help us begin to redefine and reimagine our notions of the primacy of the individual over community?

Can we call out current and past healthcare injustices and work collectively to correct them?
Can we commit to create more comprehensive ‘we vs. me’ narratives and brands that better reflect the realities of the people we seek to help?
Will we develop the will to invest both time and money in the communities who suffer from the diseases we treat?

People and organizations are championing healthcare workers, reaching out (albeit via Zoom) to old friends and networks, and donating food and PPE. Many are privileging the other over themselves by embracing social distancing and wearing masks, thereby showing tremendous strength in solidarity.

The Evidence

Early evidence seems to suggest that our sense of community may be elevated as of late. People and organizations are championing healthcare workers, reaching out (albeit via Zoom) to old friends and networks, and donating food and PPE. Many are privileging the other over themselves by embracing social distancing and wearing masks, thereby showing tremendous strength in solidarity.

This is not to say that it is an all or nothing proposition. There is a continuum along which behavior resides. Some of us are more self-interested, while some are exercising strength in solidarity. The question is whether we can put a thumb on the scales, encouraging more solidarity and less self-interest.

After the murder of George Floyd, the entire country erupted in protests of solidarity against the relentless racism suffered by persons of color—entirely ahistorical in its dimensions. By mid-July 2020, approximately 20 million Americans had participated in protests—arguably the largest movement in American history. People are spontaneously placing the injustices suffered by a segment of society over their more selfish concerns for survival.

A loose alliance of pharmaceutical companies has formed to share ideas, resources, and data with the goal of developing custom pan-coronavirus antivirals. It’s a philanthropic (not commercial) effort and their discoveries will be put in the public domain.

Many pharmaceutical companies have stepped up by donating millions of dollars for COVID-19 disaster relief. Some have gone so far as to make it clear that they have no intention of profiting from any vaccine that is eventually brought to market.