COVID-19, NIEPEWNOŚĆ, LĘK I NADZIEJA. W POSZUKIWANIU SKUTECZNEGO LEKU
COVID-19, UNCERTAINTY, FEAR AND HOPE. IN SEARCH OF AN EFFECTIVE MEDICINE

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I focus on the aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic which are connected with the deficiencies of the politics of global health, unsatisfactory preparedness for global health emergencies, and the quest for an effective medicine which could stop the spread of the disease. I am interested in the perception of risk, which is different in particular socio-cultural contexts, but often leads to uncertainty, fear and even panic. Hope may lie in developing a vaccine – which is a distant perspective – and finding an effective medicine. I describe the attempts to apply several previously used antiviral pharmaceuticals in the treatment of COVID-19 patients; the successive waves of hope and disappointment. The feeling of emergency results also in people’s individual search for medicines and protective means, which is influenced by the emotional aspects of the pandemic perceptions, by the increasing mediatisation, as well as by the situation of healthcare systems in particular countries. In addition to self-medication with available pharmaceuticals, people use the resources of local traditional medicines and new “miraculous” remedies promoted in popular social media. Also remedies of Chinese and Tibetan traditional medicines, officially accepted in China for treatment of the COVID-19 patients, gain importance. However, as anthropologists point out, even in the state of emergency Western biomedicine resists against other knowledge systems and guards its epistemic borders.

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