public health – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

COVID-19: THE SYSTEM, Part 1

On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19’s spread was now a pandemic, and on March 13, 2020, when here in Quebec a total lockdown went into effect, most people would have had many questions. Then at some point the very act of questioning, of finding certain alleged facts and explanations […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Pathways for the Post-COVID New Old World

Part 5 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. Some are openly proclaiming, “you don’t want to waste a crisis,” as they calculate how the crisis could become a series of opportunities to “change things”. We have to question whether strategic pre-positioning to shape the “post-COVID normal,” might end up even unconsciously shaping the authorities’ responses […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer: Nature vs. Culture in a Pandemic

Part 4 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. The Seventh Seal As if taken from a plot of some 1950s science-fiction classic, or an episode from the original Twilight Zone series, our reality lends itself easily to the understandings produced by fictional approaches to truth: Imagine a town, besieged by an invisible alien invader—nobody has […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Globalization in the Widening Gyre of COVID-19

Part 2 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. The Routes of Panic It turns out that when people panic, they panic according to a template. Panic follows established routes, and is more structured than we might think, since we might think of it as being amorphous, uncontrolled, and chaotic. Sometimes the template is handed to […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

From 9/11 to 2008 and COVID-19: Signs and Wonders of a Collapsing Global (Dis)order

Part 1 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series lasting from April 26 through April 30. Corona—meaning: a crown. Travelling around the world, as if at full gallop. Firing off arrows into the air: vectors (the arrowheads: the infected) travelling via airplanes (the arrows). But is it the first stage of the apocalypse for which we […]