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a virtual entity which doesn’t exist in reality independently of us
- it only exists insofar as we, humans, participate in the capitalist
process. As such, capital is a spectral entity: if we stop acting as if
we believe in it (or, say, if a state power nationalizes all productive
forces and abolishes money), capital ceases to exist, while virus is
part of reality which can be dealt with only through science.
This does not mean that there is no link between the different
levels of viral entities: biological viruses, digital viruses, capital as a
viral entity… The coronavirus epidemics itself is clearly not just a
biological phenomenon which affected humans: to understand its
spread, one has to include human culture (food habits), economy
and global trade, the thick network of international relations, ideo-
logical mechanisms of fear and panic… To properly grasp this link,
a new approach is needed. The path was shown by Bruno Latour
who was right to emphasize that the coronavirus crisis is a “dress
rehearsal” for the forthcoming climate change which is “the next
crisis, the one in which the reorientation of living conditions is
going to be posed as a challenge to all of us, as will all the details
of daily existence that we will have to learn to sort out carefully.”
The coronavirus epidemics as a moment of the global and lasting
ecological crisis brutally imposes on us

“the sudden and painful realization that the classical definition
of society – humans among themselves – makes no sense. The
state of society depends at every moment on the associations
between many actors, most of whom do not have human forms.
This is true of microbes – as we have known since Pasteur – but
also of the internet, the law, the organization of hospitals, the
logistics of the state, as well as the climate.”

There is, of course, as Latour is well aware, a key difference bet-
ween the coronavirus epidemics and the ecological crisis: “in the
health crisis, it may be true that humans as a whole are ‘fighting’
against viruses – even if they have no interest in us and go their way

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