A CULTURE OF SELFISHNESS AS A FACTOR IN THE CONTINUATION OF THE PANDEMIC

The pandemic, which lasts for two years, has significantly changed all aspects of people's social life due to restrictions on the usual forms of behavior of people in everyday life, public places, and at work. A person is put in a situation of choice: either continue to interact with relatives, friends, colleagues at work on the basis of stereotypes of behavior, but in a pandemic that poses a threat of unintentional infection with coronavirus, or strictly observe the rules of partial or complete isolation. The practice of organizing the behavior prescribed by the sanitary service of large groups of people has shown that a significant part of the population resists the requirements to wear personal protective equipment, to vaccinate with promptly created vaccines against coronavirus. Authorities are forced to impose increasingly stringent measures on violators of doctors' instructions. In the article, the clash of individual and public interests in a pandemic situation is analyzed from the point of view of a theory that reveals the essence and content of a culture of selfishness. It is a system created by people throughout the history of social development to increase the natural selfishness given to all living organisms, including humans. Some social groups, through cunning, lying, psychological and physical coercion, provide personal benefits, while others use these behaviors to preserve themselves, their families. The negative attitude of people to regulations that destroy traditional social ties, compulsory vaccination is considered as a manifestation of individual and group selfishness, formed on the basis of affirming the priority of personal freedom, their own ideas about how to protect the body from various diseases. In the actions of the part of the medical community that is trying not by the method of explanation, persuasion to develop a vaccination kit in people, but to force with the help of severe restrictions to force it, corporate selfishness is being implemented. Those who are guided by it attribute their possession of true knowledge to themselves, rejecting other options for combating the pandemic. The article states that acting on the basis of values and norms of a culture of cooperation, it is possible to achieve the desired success in suppressing coronavirus infection. The conditions for the transition of social subjects from the implementation of the rules of a culture of egoism to the adoption of values and norms of a culture of cooperation are revealed.