The problem with most people is that they don’t believe something can happen until it already has. It’s not stupidity or weakness. It’s just human nature.
- World War Z
Over the past few weeks, many European countries (I wouldn’t dare pretend to know what is happening anywhere else) have slowly been coming out of lockdown. Little by little, shops are reopening, social gathering are allowed in small committee and people can travel within bigger perimeters. As a result, different profiles of people can be observed: the ones eager to go back to “normal”; the ones that don’t really want the lockdown to end; and the ones in-between.
The back-to-normal crowd feels that the easing of the lockdown has a taste of freedom and welcome it as a long-lost friend. They are eager to socialise and gather. They have a mask in their pocket when they go out, just in case they are faced with a situation when it is required, but they are not too fuss about wearing it otherwise.
The stay-at-home crowd might have felt threatened in the presence of other people. They might have perceived them as dangerous and carriers of diseases. They might feel that it is too early to be allowed near other people just yet and would much rather keep working from home than be forced to rub shoulders with ‘other’ people. After all, how can you be sure those people wash their hands regularly? How can you tell whether they are healthy carriers of diseases or risk-free?
The in-between crowd might be… well, in-between. They might be happy to be allowed near loved ones again but feel weary of unfamiliar people. Without completely antagonising the ‘others’, they might want to keep their distance when outside, avoid direct contact with people they don’t know and develop a mild case of xenophobia (etymologically, the fear of that which is foreign to the self, the one that is not ME and doesn’t belong to “I’, the other). Even the most open-minded person can find themselves stroke by phenomenon; how can we explain it?
The Covid-19 pandemic is very likely to have awaken, or strengthen, an evolutionary mechanism buried deep down in the roots of our brain that leads us to see the ‘others’ as walking infections: the behavioural immune system, or social immune system. The behavioural immune system (BIS) is the synthesis of various behaviours and actions meant to minimise the risk of being infected by diseases and increase survival and fitness. There are many behavioural strategies of defence against parasites, some of which can be observed in non-human species, leading scientists to hypothesised that our BIS probably originated with gregarious and social forms of living. After all, the more individuals live together in a given space, the greater the risk of infection, thus the greater the need to develop strategies to protect yourself against those infections. The BIS can be divided into 3 categories: the behaviours exhibited once infected, the reactive prophylactic (i.e., meant to prevent contracting a disease) behaviours, and proactive prophylactic behaviours.
The first category is the least interesting here but has increased in complexity with the development of more social societies and more advanced technologies. It includes the immune system itself, biologically based, which acts as a protector of the organism against pathogens, as well as various behaviours such as the ingestion of medicinal plants in non-human primates and seeking medical help in humans. The advances in medicine rely on research and discoveries, which have allowed for humans to live longer than before. It also means that some diseases no longer represent a threat to our lives. This sub-section of BIS is based on cooperation between unfamiliar individuals and depends on one’s tendency to seek assistance.
The reactive prophylactic behaviours are behaviours exhibited in response to an existing threat in order to avoid contagion. Among those we find the inhibition or reduction of motor activity, i.e. travelling less. When facing a pandemic, humans have always exhibited a reduction in their travels, as by travelling less you meet less people, reducing the risk of contracting a disease. To live happy, live hidden… Another example is social distancing, an instinctive behaviour when in presence of someone sick. Don’t we all tend to move away from someone that sneezes next to us? Our brain has evolved perceptive mechanisms that allow it to detect any potential sign of infection in others. Any sign that can even remotely indicate the presence of an infected individual will trigger the BIS: someone looking paler than usual, a cough, a redness on the skin. The simple perception of those infection-connoting signs triggers the immune system (the biological one) and leads to the production of more infection-fighting agents in the body. That in turn can be advantageous if you do end up contracting the infection you were worried about: your immune system has prepared all its soldiers to fight the infection and is ready to kick it’s ass. But what happen if you do not catch said infection? Well, do you know the story of the boy who cried wolf? Same stuff here: the immune system becomes less efficient later in life if your brain keep freaking out each time someone sneeze near you.
Finally, the proactive prophylactic behaviours regroup behaviours that occur when there is no sign of infectious agents in order to prevent any development of latent infection. Concretely, you wash your hands to avoid risking bringing infectious agents to your face and risking it entering your body and developing an infection. You don’t know if there is any infectious agent on your hands, but you wash them anyway.
The BIS is thus the combination of many adapted behaviours that have evolved to prevent the contraction of any infection. But are those behaviours adaptive in our modern societies? Having a greater sensibility to detecting potential infectious threat has probably led to greater survival chances than not paying enough attention to signs reflecting the presence of an infection. In some contexts, it thus seems that unfortunately intolerance could be adaptive. Fearing the ‘others’ could be an evolutive strategy to prevent infection. However, thanks to the progress in biology and medical research, scientists have a far better understanding of how diseases spread than we did less than 100 years ago. Because of that, our BIS as it is could be… well, obsolete. It is no longer viable to fear someone based on their skin tone: we now know that a redness does not have to be associated with a contagious condition. A rash is unpleasant for the person experiencing it but will not transfer to the person sitting nearby.
The risk we are though facing is that if our brain can no longer rely on external/visible signs to detect infections in our surrounding, it might react by seeing threats everywhere and in everyone. Acting out of instinct, all the ‘other’ people would thus become the enemy. Our salvation in the face of a potential globalised xenophobic crisis is that the brain has also developed a reasoning centre, able to gather information and weigh pros and cons in order to make an informed decision. For instance, completely avoiding the ‘others’ might not be the solution; instead, we should decide how often we should go outside, how long it is reasonable to spend in the presence of other people and how many people should be around us at one given time, what precautions we should take when going out, etc. Reason can oppose the BIS and make it see the benefits to rubbing shoulders with the ‘others’. As more information becomes available on the current situation, it will become easier to decide whether or not the risks of taking public transports outweigh the benefits of getting back to work or acting cooperatively. And remember: we’re all some else’s 'other'.
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