Pandemic Is The Consequence, Not Cause: Armenia’s Physicist President

NEW DELHI: As countries the world over struggle to battle the Coronavirus, the President of Armenia, a small Asian nation that has a population of 3.5 million, has what he calls a “strange” take on the current scheme of things. “Where we are now is not because of the pandemic. The pandemic is not the cause but the consequence,” President Armen Sarkissian told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in an exclusive interview. “Many things in this world are not behaving in a classical way. Pandemics are one of the risks. Humanity has not realised that we live in a completely different world,” said Sarkissian, a physicist who believes ideas of quantum mechanics can work in social life and politics. To illustrate how people are becoming ‘quantum objects’ in their behaviour, he cited an example: 60-70 years ago, people were shocked when a President made a public address through radio or television. Now, Presidents communicate with people through Twitter. The President called upon Turkey to recognise the genocide of Armenian Christians committed on its soil over a century ago. It takes strength to admit one’s mistake, he says. President Sarkissian also thanked India and PM Modi for the supply of medicines to his country in the wake of the pandemic.