THERE’S a twin flaw within humanity that will make coronavirus and its legacy much harder to deal with: ignorance and arrogance. The pair go hand-in-hand.

Few of us know anything about virology or epidemiology, most of don’t even have a basic qualification in biology – but like Brexit, like the Financial Crash, like the invasion of Iraq, suddenly everyone is an expert in transmission and herd immunity, just as they were once experts in trade deals, subprime mortgages, and nation-building.

If coronavirus spins completely out of control, as it now seems to be doing, and claims lives in unimaginable numbers, then, in this ignorant and arrogant world, scapegoats will be sought. Someone, something, will be blamed and punished. Democracy could suffer.

It’s astonishing that so many of us think we’re smart enough to know the answers to problems that the world’s best minds cannot solve. There are thousands upon thousands of scientists on this planet whose life’s work has been the study of pandemics but, today, they cannot really help us. They can advise our governments, they can weigh up chance and probability and recommend this or that course of action – but they cannot provide cast iron guarantees, or clear paths to safety. So many of us, though, think we know better.

Perhaps, thanks to the efforts of these experts, some governments will mitigate the effects of coronavirus. Perhaps South Korea points a way forward. Perhaps the US points a way to certain catastrophe. Perhaps lockdowns will work, perhaps herd immunity is the answer. But perhaps not. Perhaps the only solution is for the whole world to work together – and that’s not happening.

Ignorance and arrogance could be the pallbearers of democracy. If tragedy unfolds both ignorance and arrogance will demand punishment be meted out. Governments will inevitably be blamed. Experts could become villains again. Democracy runs the risk of being collateral damage because it is unable to foretell what the future holds.

However, we do know about the past. And it’s in the past that we can find some hints of what happens to a society after a pandemic.

The one truth we know from history is that when society intersects with disease we get change. It’s such a dependable truth that there should be a mathematical equation for it: S + D = C. Society plus disease equals change.

Here’s two examples. The Plague of Athens and the Black Death. Now, not for a moment is anyone comparing coronavirus to the plague, even though nobody can know the future, but if we look at what happened in Athens, for example, we see disease filleting democracy.

The plague – which may have been typhoid, smallpox or measles – hit democratic Athens in 430BC in the middle of the Peloponnesian War when the city was engaged in a life or death struggle with its rival Sparta. Once the plague had finished with Athens, the city was on its knees and so was democracy. Athens lost the war, and democracy declined inexorably.

Society was changed for evermore after the Black Death claimed around half the population of Europe by 1351. So many people died that the poor could insist upon better wages than ever before for their labour – hastening the end of feudalism. Nearer home, the Peasants Revolt of 1381 – when ordinary people demanded a fairer deal from the English king – was a direct consequence of the Black Death. The plague also super-charged the Renaissance as society began to completely reimagine itself after such upheaval.

Think of our own times. The coronavirus pandemic seems to come at the worst juncture. If illness destabilises and changes society, the coronavirus has picked a society already destabilised and in the middle of dangerous change.

For two decades now, the west has been in political turmoil. In the wake of September 11, 2001, terror, war and racism quickly stepped forward. The Iraq War destroyed trust in centrism. Anti-democratic populist movements across the west fed off refugees and immigration. The Financial Crash created a seething anger among the population. Social media disrupted how we communicate with one another. Brexit and Trump were a twisted spasm of nihilistic rage against what had gone before.

Democracy is not well. Just a few weeks ago, a study by Cambridge University found that dissatisfaction with democracy within developed countries was at a record high. Some four million people were surveyed. Researchers found discontent was particularly high in Britain and America.

Data shows that from the 1970s there was a steady growth in satisfaction with democracy until a peak just after the millennium. It was then the rot set in. The study suggests that rising dissatisfaction is down to the financial crash, the refugee crisis, and ‘foreign policy failures’. The authors warn that the rise of populism is not a cause but a symptom of this loss of confidence in democracy.

So on one hand, we have western democracy at an historically weak ebb, and on the other hand we have a virus sweeping its way across the planet, with ignorance and arrogance and growing anger trailing in its wake.

Will democracy be the biggest casualty of coronavirus? Can democracy in the time of coronavirus survive the rage of social media, the conspiracy theories of those who are filled with self-belief but empty of facts and wisdom? Is democracy already too wounded by war, money, racism, hate and lies to withstand the blow which coronavirus will deliver?

The symbolic image of coronavirus now is Retreat – people retreating into their homes, countries retreating behind their borders. Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently advocated a global effort to beat coronavirus – similar to the Manhattan Project to create the first A-bomb: scientists from across the world working together to find a vaccine. But that’s not happening.

If we pulled together instead of apart, maybe the battle against coronavirus would help re-establish trust in democracy. But as things stand – as we separate into individual scared and angry nations, as we divide into groups of angry people filled with ignorance and arrogance – surely democracy can only be undermined.

Democracy is very fragile. It’s a hard plant to make flower in human soil, and when it does blossom it seldom lasts long. Today, disease presents an existential threat to democracy – only one can come out on top.

Neil Mackay is Scotland’s Columnist of the Year