Bernard-Henri Lévy: I fear China will use coronavirus to become ‘Power Number One’

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a haunted man. The French philosopher, speaking to me from Paris, told me that when he was 20 years old, in 1968, a flu pandemic broke out across the world which killed an estimated one million people. ‘It was at least as serious as the pandemic of today but without the same reaction.’

He sees our response to the coronavirus in two ways, positive and negative. ‘It is good news that our respect for life has increased and that we want to save life first of all.’ He calls this ‘undeniable progress for civilisation. And for that we have to be really happy’.

But the downside is ‘the over-reaction, the sort of collective hysteria which surrounds this phenomenon.’ The first impact has been on the coverage of geopolitics. ‘Big events are being completely deleted from our mental screens. I don’t know what is happening in Syria or to the Christians of Nigeria.