On Eurispes an article signed by the President of the Observatory on Security has been published, Pasquale Preziosa and the vice president, Robert DeVita, where the theme of "lockdown”Implemented by most countries to combat the spread of Covid-19. An extreme and considered unique measure to stem the contagion of a still unknown virus on which researchers and scientists from all over the world are testing day and night, in an inexorable race against time. In addition to the predominant health factor, economic, social and political factors also contribute to managing the crisis. Precisely on this point the narrative of the analysis made by Preziosa and De Vita focuses.
“The future is the environment where society will go to live tomorrow, but the future itself does not exist, it is only a forecast, the future is built every day according to the decision-making process for implementing the identified strategy.
In the present complex pandemic situation, there are at least four factors running towards the crisis: health, economic, social and political.
The first factor that reaches the level of irreversible criticality could trigger a domino effect on the other factors.
At the outbreak of the epidemic, which then turned into a pandemic, the scientific world indicated to politics the containment measures to be implemented to mitigate the ongoing health impact.
The decrees issued in succession have progressively applied the necessary social restrictions and identified the first safety protocols for the activities essential for the productive world, in order to mitigate the risk associated with the high number of infected people, thus allowing hospital resources to cope with the pandemic .
The consequence of this decision has already shown the first positive, although not definitive, effects.
The mitigation of pandemic risk, however, has led to an increase in the risk of instability not only in other sectors, but also on the health factor itself for the treatment of "non-covid" diseases.
Many analysts believe that, beyond four weeks of applying the most stringent containment provisions, it is necessary to verify if the shock therapy does not produce greater systemic risk (on the four factors considered) than the pandemic does.
How long the pandemic phenomenon will last is not known to anyone. It is known instead that the so-called "lockdown"Of Nations, if not carefully managed, could turn into"knockdown".
In the theory of complexity, the transition point between the two cases is called "tipping points", point beyond which the system develops without any control.
Emergency management must be part of the emergency procedures risk management for the mitigation of the risk levels associated with both the protection of health and the protection of production flows, and the two levels of risk are connected to each other.
The necessary quarantine imposed on the population has sharply curbed the whole economy, with repercussions on both the production of goods and services and on the logistics chain, with possible serious consequences for the survival of the country (in its social, economic and political balance), if prolonged beyond certain limits.
From a social point of view, this period of forced isolation and extraordinary limitation of freedom, combined with fear and uncertainty, they risk causing a collective (immuno) depression making our civilization permeable to serious and dangerous social diseases.
In decision making and, above all, in the public choice theory, the decision polarization on a single risk factor aggravates the risk itself and the consequent damage.
In the coming weeks, the collective awareness of the need for coexistence in the medium term with the virus made endemic and the social micro-adaptation to relationships "contactless" will allow to enhance in the risk assessment the other factors, gradually leading to a more balanced choice of risk mitigation that protects health, but that prevents the lockdown to turn into a knockdown.