In January 2021, philosopher Barbara Stiegler published a leaflet in the Tracts section of Gallimard Publishing House: From the démocratie in pandémie, or from democracy in the midst of the epidemic. Barbara Stiegler is a professor at the University of Bordeaux and works with people from different disciplines. This booklet has been written with collaborators experts in public health, hospital practices, linguistics, public law, political philosophy, philosophy of science and political history.

The thesis of this library is that COVID-19 is not a pandemic, but a “syndemia”, because it means that the disease is due to social inequalities and the ecological crisis. Thus, COVID-19 is not terrible in itself: it is terrible because it shows us clearly to what extent man and society go wrong, both from the point of view of physical health and psychological health and intellectual health.

However, COVID-19 highlights the extent of chronic diseases (hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, breath, cancer), both individual and morally weakened by the work conditions that incinerate us; most people who are in a situation of mental, affective and material precariousness.
What is more, the COVID-19 syndemia has made it possible to show in the eyes of all the poor knowledge of the rulers, the little ability to adapt and adapt randomly, the lack of ingenuity, their contempt for society, the inclinations that cannot hide the authoritarian stance they choose.

In Bizkitarte there are no large waves of waves at the edges: Society, under the command of the authorities, is engaged in a war against COVID-19, as if coexistence was a pandemic. Recently, Emmanuel Macron has imposed the fourth defeat on us, asking about tele-education for our children, and tele-work, so that, if not, we can move the global economic system forward without interruption, with renewed dictionaries and practices. Considering COVID-19 as syndemia, on the contrary, we can warn that the most sustainable way to combat the scourge would be to change the economic and political system, as various associations and organizations have called for.

But that change, how many would you really want? The responsibility for deciding on those responsible is a good time, and not really acting in favour of climate change, social equity, the defence of fundamental rights, etc. Notice what challenges we have: we should change our entire economic organization, redefine the values of citizenship, establish my knowledge and go back to studies -- and I couldn't say that this kind of collective force would lead us to salvation.

The question would therefore be: do we want, with ease or despair, an authoritarian regime? Or do we want to live in democracy, in real democracy, I mean, with the climate of fundamental debate that this requires, and at all social levels? The ability to ask the right questions, real knowledge and address setting can only be built in interaction, says Barbara Stiegler, not in banal and blind authoritarianism.

This fourth house socket will look like Franco, as it could not otherwise be, a new step on a never-ending cross-country road. To see if it helps us, each of us, to be clearer than we want for ourselves and for society, regardless of any authoritarian ideology and practice.