Anthropologists Answer Four Questions about the Pandemic

Abstract

When news of the novel coronavirus broke out, those of us in Kenya, where I'm located, thought it would go away without ever causing the havoc we have seen. After all, Africa has had its own share of viral outbreaks, such as Ebola, in its bag of mixed fortune, but it emerged out of these outbreaks. In any case, previous outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) had left Africa unscathed. We were wrong! As of January 10, 2021, Africa as a continent had cumulatively 3,037,007 COVID-19 cases and 72,216 deaths, while Kenya's confirmed cases stood at 98,184 with 1,704 deaths. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Kenya on March 13, 2020, not from a traveler from China, the virus's epicenter, but a Kenyan returning home from the United States through London. Immediately the government pronounced a raft of measures, including the invocation of the Public Health Act (1986 Rev. 2012), which allowed health authorities to prescribe and enforce measures to stem the virus's spread. A day after, the government imposed a travel ban from high-risk countries, effectively shutting down passenger air transport, and an order to close all learning institutions was also issued. These measures were tightened further with the closure of businesses and offices, the declaration of a countrywide dusk-to-dawn curfew (7 p.m. to 5 a.m.) and a ban on any form of public gathering, including funerals, religious, and political meetings. The net effect of these measures soon became apparent almost in every sector of the economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted activities at various levels: personal, family, community, and institutional. At the personal level, individuals had to deal with fear of the unknown. One of the issues with COVID-19 is that you cannot tell who is infected, especially if they are asymptomatic. My own schedules were altered as I could no longer, for example, go for my exercise. The problem was compounded by the fact that compliance with issued guidelines was low. The second challenge was at the family level. COVID-19 disrupted (extended) family meetings. These meetings often involve several generations, which put at greater risk the senior members of the extended family. Therefore, we had to limit these meetings as a way of curbing potential spread of the virus. The restrictions in place prohibited church attendance, weddings, and limited attendance at burial functions. These are important functions that guarantee continued connection within the community. There have been three major effects of the pandemic at my institution. First, as an early containment measure, the government ordered closure of all learning institutions in the country. Universities that relied on tuition fees paid by students were denied a source of revenue to support their operations. Second, the closure of universities also had another, positive, effect on university operations. Kenyan universities have been slow to adopt online learning, but closure and the pressure to pay staff and meet other statutory obligations accelerated, although rather haphazardly at first, the movement of learning and administration of examinations to online platforms. Third, a declaration of cessation of movement also halted field-based research activities. Even after the relaxation of the measures, anthropological approaches to data collection, such as participant observation and focus group discussion, became an immediate source of concern as potentially increasing the risk for spreading the virus. When teams restarted field research, they changed data-collection procedures and also incurred additional costs for personal protective equipment like hand sanitizers and face masks. I have had a keen interest in research focusing on zoonoses. A topic of discussion central to zoonoses is how disease, such as Ebola, cross the animal–human boundary and our role as humans in aiding that cross-over. I believe COVID-19 crossed over because of our own actions—whether from the Chinese wet markets driven by our culinary preferences or through some other way. I do not, for now, believe that there was a deliberate human effort to introduce the virus nor accidental release of the same. Our very actions, and our insatiable appetite to tinker with nature, have led us to where we are as a human race. Anthropology helps me ask questions. One of the issues with the implementation of the containment measures relates to how human remains are treated. At the start of the pandemic, the health authorities took control of burials of suspected COVID-19 cases, often doing so even in the dead of night and with little to no involvement of families of the deceased. So increasingly I am asking, within a public health space, what rights and rites do the deceased claim? Are there cross-cultural differences in how these rights and rites are perceived, practiced, and dispensed?