The coronavirus is the source of anxiety for 7.7 billion human beings (World Population Clock estimate) who are waiting for answers to deal with a complex reality that is well able to confront us with ethical dilemmas, which are apparently difficult to surmount. Lockdown or carry on with our activities? This week or in September? Vaccine today, or in 2021? Definitive medical therapies or no treatment at all? Life or death?

The binary matrix – humanity’s old friend, which proposes a world represented by zero (0) and one (1) – seems to continue guiding thought patterns via the “either this or that” model.

However, the most recent debate forums regarding the challenges of the 21st century practically talk about nothing other than this outdated matrix and the immediate need to transition to a new world. Instead of "or", the operative word is "and". No alternating, but rather addition. In the place of a binary matrix, a systemic, quantum matrix.

The beginning of 2020 has opened the eyes of even those who are most reluctant to accept this new reality, because we are witnessing the death of the binary matrix – decimated by the coronavirus before our very eyes. Space is opening to us to be able to understand everything from a new perspective.

The new reality – which for a long time had shown up in negotiations with different generations about a world where authoritarian and libertarian, distant and connected, and the masses and the elites coexisted, all of which is good for business and good for people – moves on to consisting of simultaneous opposites, adding to each other, instead of alternating between each other.

My life is important, but so is yours. The lack of good health of one of us causes a sanitation disaster that affects everyone. The lack of human dignity for some of us produces the social disaster that is now in the offing.... And thoughts of this type are multiplied throughout the various agendas that unite us to face collectively impactful issues in such distinctly different areas as health, employment, and climate change.

As for combating the pandemic, in the midst of so many uncertainties, one certainty must guide us: the old model does not work for us anymore. Only a systemic matrix will make us able to find answers to the complex challenge we face.

Therefore, a first action front should have the objective of taming the curve of the spread of the disease, in an attempt to rationalize hospital services. It is necessary to gain some time, controlling how fast the virus spreads and, consequently, spacing out the arrival of the most serious cases at hospitals. The solution is already underway, guided by Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta and coordinated, regionally by governors and mayors, with the support of health agencies and organizations, as well as society, in general, which accepted joining the collective efforts to control the disaster that we have been watching in Italy and Spain – and all signs point to it reaching the United States in a few more days.

A systemic solution foresees that society and the State work together to promote large-scale engagement in collective efforts. This comes to bear on the attitudes of people who stay at home, while encouraging those closest to them to comply with the restrictive measures and to make donations, such as the mobilization of companies that contribute products and services to expand healthcare structures for those who fall ill. Self-confinement, in defense of the most vulnerable, and preparations for supporting the neediest persons are practices of a quantum algorithm solution that reveals how much Brazil has grown in citizenship attitudes in recent years.

A second action front seeks to ensure the least possible impact on economic activities. Separating high-risk groups from those presenting a low risk, and gradually returning the latter group to productive involvement, is of funda- mental importance to put the economy back on track. We are already taking this path. Essential services are being maintained. Truckers are supplying the entire country. Pharmacies and supermarkets continue to serve the needs of the population. Technology companies are working nonstop so that an immense number of activities can be continued through home offices. The government has already shown signs that it will inject funds into the economy, in order to ensure dignity to those who are most in need, while alternatives are being pursued in the field of economics. Once again, here, we can drive advances with simultaneous initiatives.

We will not be surprised if business people, employees, and their unions unite to put together solutions that balance the healthcare needs of the work force with the continuity of production, thus ensuring the supplies needed by families and maintaining economic development.

We will not be surprised if large companies join the members of their productive ecosystems in financing clients and suppliers, in order that they have the possibility of overcoming the difficulties arising from the shutdowns.

We will not be surprised if employers and employees work together to transform their manufacturing plants into production units for alcohol hand sanitizers, masks, clothing for medical professionals, and other hospital supplies.

We will not be surprised if entrepreneurs and investors unite with the State, health organizations, and social agencies to deliver resources to those most in need and to do their best to avoid suffering and to reduce losses, in terms of lives, time, and the nation’s wealth.

We will not be surprised if banks rewrite agreements with debtors, by putting their debts on hold. Neither will we be surprised if the stock markets do a reset, in order to minimize losses, and if governments reconfigure the dynamics of commitments made between nations.

We will not be surprised if the parties open a dialogue and renegotiate agreements, recognizing their present mutual difficulties and creating intelligent models for ensuring mutual survival, family solvency, and the perpetuity of businesses.

We will not be surprised if community leaders unite with the Army to guide the population and prevent the decimation of the elderly in the neediest areas of cities.

This is an unparalleled opportunity to dismiss any ideological radicalism that does not accept the fact that a minimal State varies in size, according to the dimensions of the challenges facing the community that it sustains. The minimal State is based on the premise of efficiency, but it also leads and drives solutions for the complexities that arise, such as those we face today. It is the task of the State to emend all of the efforts to mobilize its best people and organize society to produce answers when the questions are unprecedented and multiply day by day.

The third action front is science. We need medicines and vaccines that effectively prevent and treat the disease. We know that it will be difficult to develop these resources for immediate use, but doctors and researchers, worldwide, are learning more about the disease every day, they optimize the protocols and adjust the treatments. Simply changing the way intubated patients are ventilated has drastically reduced the levels of contamination of doctors and nurses. Such small steps as this one give us time to deal with the difficulties, while other groups – connected within an unprecedented global interaction platform – are seeking definitive answers for the huge complications that arise every day in hospitals all over the world.

These three fronts constitute a gigantic challenge, even though they represent only a small portion of the systemic reality in which we find ourselves. Twenty-first century human beings are not accustomed to restrictions, much less step-by-step disciplines, and they are not content with transitory answers, which is an inevitable condition of quantum, changing scenarios.

The idea that the demands brought on by the coronavirus have been resolved or, on the other hand, the point of view that the outbreak of the disease has put everything in peril are both equally wrong. Neither of the two opposites represents the reality in which we live. What is most important is to get all of the measures underway on all fronts, processing both the information that will indicate the best combination of social and economic organization and the data from scientific research that will allow us to arrive more quickly at a medical solution.

The world is putting together the first phase of the solution process while some want a final stage already in the first round of the biggest battle humanity has faced in many, many years. We have references to the Great Depression of 1929 and to the sanitation collapse caused by the Spanish flu. With equanimity and optimism, our generation will realize that we have elements for creating paths. Values, knowledge, information, technology, and a systemic and dialogical approach are the elements that will bring about the answers that we are yet to find, in these days.

The most anxious people among us experience a binary reality, divided among those who demand general and unrestricted lockdowns and those who question the excessive use of lockdowns. The latter have an eye on the economic data, although the models indicate that a 1% death rate in nearly 8 billion inhabitants of the Earth leaves us with a deficit of 80 million lives in our current account, a number that no ethic is able to face and for which no politician or government leader is able to take responsibility. The first group simply denies that shutdown economics will lead us into a scenario with implications perhaps just as damaging as those of the pandemic, stirred by desperation, caused by dismay, by the total impossibility of dealing with the problems of the present, as well as replanning for the future.

This dilemma alone confirms what we have written above. In terms of the coronavirus, there will be no OR-type solution, that is, binary. Only an AND-type response – systemic – is viable.

The operative words for facing the coronavirus are patience and intelligence. We are all performers balancing on a tightrope. If we are disciplined in implementing all of the fronts consistently and permanently, if we understand how interdependent we are and enforce social distance and digital connections, if we work on coordinated and interdependent fronts in both health care and the economy, without accepting, under any circumstance, a solution that serves only one of the axes, we will succeed.

However, if we insist on following the 21st century handbook only half way, by taking on attitudes of liquidity, immediate rewards, consumerism, and instant gratification, while choosing one of the extremes of those who loudly preach this or that, then health care will surely kill the economy, or vice versa.

There’s no choice here. The answer is, first, human, then systemic, technological, and collaborative. The solution does not give up on any life that can be preserved, because, above all else, it trusts the largest and most efficient matrices of economic development in history: intelligence, a will to overcome, and science, all of which are granted equal value.

Different generations are called upon to simultaneously coordinate joint efforts. The older ones have experience and thoughtful reflection arising from having experienced many difficulties (even though none of those moments can be compared with this one) and they are open to connecting with visionary and technological youth who make knowledge circulate at the speed of light.

We will move forward in our collaborative efforts within this new model. We will be prepared and committed to doing our best – with plans for health, caring for those who are most vulnerable, taking measures for the economy, building societal awareness, and working collaboratively as never before.

We will succeed!

Daniela de Rogatis