Answer:
Can the current COVID-19 crisis be considered a “natural” disaster?
This question suggests several responses. It is interesting in that it invites us to reflect upon how we frame such an event and what consequences this can have in terms of the way we analyse it and deal with it. Even if the virus is naturally occurring, this pandemic is no more “natural” than disasters caused by tsunamis, hurricanes, or floods. The social sciences have for a long time shown that disasters occur when a phenomenon, which may be of natural or technological origin, meets a society made vulnerable by political decisions, economic choices, or forms of social organisation.
What seems interesting to observe is the way in which we think about what is happening and what this tells us about the means that are deployed to deal with the situation. Let’s consider UN agencies, for example: the international coordination concerning pandemics is managed by the International Health Organization and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). For these agencies, the current situation is considered as an “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. In France, the frame is similarly that of a “health crisis” (crise sanitaire).
For me, such wording bears two risks:
The first one stems from the decision to talk about a “crisis” or “emergency” and to use the vocabulary that goes with this. The notion of crisis implies a normal state and its temporary disruption before a return to “normal”. The crisis translates graphically through the metaphor of a “peak”, and through the more naturalising metaphor of a “wave”, as well as curves that rise and come back to their original level more or less rapidly. It is a linear reading of the crisis. In addition to this, talking about a crisis implies that the structure is only affected temporarily. In the current situation, however, it is obvious that this pandemic is not an abnormal disruption of a “normal” functioning but rather one of the normal consequences of an “abnormal” functioning. The current situation will also trigger a shock for existing social structures, which therefore means that it corresponds better to the notion of disaster, which designates a transformative event that destroys, reverses, upsets the order that precedes it.
