A primal need for certainty where none exists often makes us point fingers that we should not Over the past week, the outbreak of covid-19 in India has been met with a peculiar public outcry.
It seems to blame migrant workers (with limited means) for violating physical distancing, or the followers of a faith for becoming “viral vectors" after some of them attended a religious congregation in Delhi.
Blame is also assigned to people outside our borders—in particular, the Chinese. It does not help that much of it is based on fake news.
But what explains this almost pathological manner in which we blame people in the midst of an pandemic? Curiously enough, according blame in the midst of a crisis is a feature of human society long observed by