Text/Zhang Zhiyong, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of China Business Times, Plague was originally a very distant concept. Many people have long lost their understanding and vigilance about this, and they would never have thought that such a disease would appear again in modern society.

text/Zhang Zhiyong Deputy Editor-in-Chief of China Business Times

Plague was originally a very distant concept. Many people have long lost their understanding and vigilance about it, and they would never have thought that such a disease would appear again in modern society. The sudden arrival of the new coronavirus pneumonia caught people off guard, so they had to use the most primitive methods to cut off the source of infection, cut off the transmission route, and protect susceptible people. These are also the three major links of human epidemic prevention over thousands of years.

locked down the city, isolated it, and reduced contact between people. This emergency measure has left hundreds of millions of people at home, and has also made some people interested in books on plague, including disease history and epidemic knowledge.

Finding the true face of disease

I like Susan Sontag 's works. It's completely accidental. After reading it, I can't let go. I sighed at such a classic. How can I see it? It's completely "I regret meeting too late". Susan Sontag’s true masterpieces are “Opposition”, “The Style of Radical Will”, “On Photography”, “Volcanic Lover”, etc. But "HTM5 Metaphor for Disease " will make you feel more "deafening". To be honest, in my opinion, before reading her books, just reading the titles of these books will have the pleasure of reading. She is known as the "conscience of the American public". In the cultural circle, Susan Sontag, three women, Simon Beauvoir, and Hannah Arendt, are collectively known as the most important female intellectuals in contemporary Western countries.

In the book "Metaphor of Disease", Susan Sontag uses great courage and intellectual keenness to strip away those metaphors and restore the true face of disease. How to eliminate or resist metaphorical thinking as much as possible is actually the most sincere way to return to the most sincere way of looking at disease.

"Metaphor of Disease" is obviously restoring the true nature of the disease. As she said in the book: "Staying away from these meanings, these metaphors seem to bring liberation and even comfort to people. However, to get rid of these metaphors, it is not enough to just avoid them. They must be revealed, criticized, carefully studied and exhausted."

Since humans were born on this planet, we have been dealing with viruses for at least 250,000 years. Diseases have always been with people, and diseases seem to be ahead of humans, waiting for us all the time. If we compare 250,000 years to one year, it can be said that humans began to know this old and new opponent in the last minute.

Diseases are constantly changing, and its ability to adapt to changes has exceeded people's imagination. Disease has never lost its ambition to attack humans. It is proactive, it is mutating, it is becoming smarter. Technology must also follow it, and humans are always in a passive state. But humans want to defeat them. We can see from many books that the history of human civilization development is also a history of the game between humans and diseases. Diseases that live in symbiosis with humans are affecting human evolution in their complex and subtle ways.

I don’t want to look at the development of the big history from the history of disease. What I care more about is the impact of disease on a person. In Susan Sontag's view, disease is the yin side of life, a more troublesome citizenship. Everyone who comes to the world has dual citizenship, one identity belongs to the Kingdom of Health and the other belongs to the Kingdom of Disease. Although we are all happy to use passports from the Kingdom of Health, sooner or later, at least for a while, each of us is forced to admit that we are also citizens of another Kingdom.

Diseases are always with people. In addition to abnormal death, the end point of a person can be said to die from various diseases, or diseases bring about failure of various organs. I am not a medical practitioner, and what I know and understand are basic common sense about diseases. "The Metaphor of Disease" seems to constantly remind me that understanding of diseases is actually a person's understanding of themselves, and our understanding and understanding of ourselves are what diseases allow us to obtain. I have some doubts about how I got such feelings or conclusions after reading "The Metaphor of Disease", but in my opinion, it may be because we dare not admit this, so we avoid such understanding.

"Plague" is actually a traditional medical term, and it is a common saying adopted before the pathogenic factors are understood."epidemic" and "epidemic diseases" are modern medical terms. It is difficult to explain where the disease comes from. Especially epidemic diseases, often come and go without a trace, and their suddenness catches people off guard - even more so with the new coronavirus. In addition to hereditary diseases, the most unpredictable ones are infectious diseases and those viruses that are still mutating.

The new coronavirus is a brand new disease. In my opinion, understanding the disease during such a period will actually better reduce unnecessary panic or get rid of unnecessary fears.

Looking back at history, diseases have been waiting for us

In the first 20 years of the 21st century, three major epidemics occurred in the world, two of which occurred in China - SARS in 2003 and the new coronavirus today. Its suddenness, invincibility, and spread between people make people feel fear. This fear cannot be said to be the fear of death. Even those who are not afraid of death will be feared. This fear lies in the sudden fatality, death without any signs, death inexplicably, or facing homicide at any time.

Susan and her manuscript

Disease No matter who you are, there are scientists, directors, doctors, young, strong, healthy, elderly, children, etc. No one can escape, no one can escape, no one can do it alone.

Who to choose for the virus? I don’t know what you may have come into contact with, and if you are infected, you may have been selected. Not alone, maybe a family. Even the young and strong hospital director, who was elected by the new crown pneumonia, was still powerless. People became so fragile and small, and people were so vulnerable. People don’t want to believe all this. Isn’t all this too magical?

In fact, reality is not magical at all, it is only cruel, but it is just that the living people cannot face it.

The Spring Festival in 2020 must be the Spring Festival that has never been seen in China in history. On January 31, the World Health Organization listed the novel coronavirus pneumonia as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). This reminds people of the previous ones that the H1N1 influenza A in 2009, the polio outbreak in 2014, the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the Zika virus outbreak in 2016, and the Ebola outbreak in the Congo (DRC) since 2018 were all listed as PHEIC, all caused by the virus.

If you put these viruses in the past 20 years in the long river of history, it is actually just a moment, but every virus threatens the lives of countless people. The sudden pulling of the trigger for a living life is not the concept of how many people die at all. Even if one dies, it is the "magnificence" of the disease, but death is often a superposition of countless people. In fact, I don’t know how many people die from diseases every year. Therefore, what I want to express is that diseases are actually waiting for us all the time, and before us.

According to records, from 243 BC to 2154 AD, there were 352 major epidemics in China, with an average of once every 6.1 years. Plague is no longer a representation of disease. In the past when science was not yet developed, even today's helplessness with disease, the metaphor of disease has strengthened this human disaster. Instead, the metaphor of disease has become more pleasant to the public or used at will in order to achieve a more vivid image.

Fighting with disease

Who can defeat us and disease, in my opinion, has become more a philosophical topic. Is the virus and us the same world or two? Is it a virus living in our world or we living in the world of viruses. One thing is clear: we live on this earth, and its temperature and environment are also very suitable for viruses. We should be in a world. When viruses invade our bodies and can continuously replicate and reproduce, it may be rapid, long-term lurking or slow, etc.

When facing the disease, who defeated whom? For some reason, I felt that such a problem was a bit dull. The only one who can defeat people is actually the human being, but at the same time, people are powerless in the face of diseases, including many natural forces.This is by no means pessimism, it is human inaction and finiteness. Man conquers nature is a wish, but it is not a fact, and it may also be achieved in the future, but humans do not have such ability to achieve it at present.

Good wishes always want to have a magic pill, but if we truly believe in science and have a scientific spirit and a scientific attitude, in fact, wishes are difficult to achieve. No cure drugs are reality. The most ideal may be just a suppression of diseases. But even so, humans are still constantly exploring and never giving up. I think this should be the essence of the scientific spirit.

When new diseases come, all modern research and technological means are instantly brought back to their original form. How to improve one's immunity depends on the power of the origin of life, a healthy lifestyle, adequate sleep, a reasonable and light diet, eating more vegetables and fruits, drinking more water, a positive and optimistic attitude, etc., can only rely on this most essential power.

The greatness of a doctor is the kindness of a doctor and the living Buddha in the world. Doctors cannot save lives. Life and death have life and death, and this is true to everyone. This is not pessimism, it is respect for science and love for doctors. There is nothing terrible about death, but the hospice care for people is something that modern civilized society needs to rethink and face, and for civilized society, it is even more urgent.

The disease will pass and may come back. What people need is to keep moving forward.