Pandemic 2020: What We Should Learn
[Writer’s Note: This was originally posted on my website on 3/19/2020. This was considered a “Current Event” article, and since then, new details have come out since publishing this article that changes the story. Republishing this article is a way to archive old work and my thoughts at the time. There is a full podcast in video and audio format covering this article.]
Pandemics suck. Locked down, shut out, and left to our social media accounts and streaming services for entertainment. I mean… this pandemic literally killed sports. So, what we obviously should be doing is figuring out who to blame and how we can spin it to make ourselves feel better. Or maybe those are not the lessons we should be taking away from this crisis. We should not be using this moment to score political points, spread misinformation, and promote bad ideas.
First, we need to expose this meme going around about how, “everyone loves socialism when there is a crisis.” This idea started with an opinion piece in The New York Times by Farhad Manjoo titled Republicans Want Medicare for All, but Just for This One Disease. My intuition always tells me after reading something like this that our education system has failed us, but my sense of reason allows me to see this for what it is, an attempt to use a crisis to push an idea. The rider has once again tamed the elephant (Jonathan Haidt reference). This misunderstanding is because of the conflation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, between the terms collectivist and socialist. A collectivist policy, such as a stimulus package to help struggling businesses and families during a crisis, is a policy that is meant to benefit a group of people rather than promote individualism. A socialist policy, such as universal basic income (UBI), is a continuous flow of capital given to a group of people. Both policies are redistributive because both must be paid for by the government, which is funded by the taxpayer, but one is a behavior that does not have a defined end date and the other is a behavior in a snapshot in time. A single stimulus package with a defined end date, or sunset provision, would not fit the arena of socialism unless the redistributive package became a regular benefit to a group of people. To make it simple, socialism is long-term behavior using continuous redistributive policy to benefit a group until the policy is changed or gotten rid of, and collectivism is short-term behavior using a one-off policy to benefit a group in a snapshot in time.
For those people who still believe collectivist policies are considered socialist, remind them of the conditions under which that policy was implemented and all the direction imposed by government during that time. For example, if someone cites a stimulus package as a form of UBI, then remind them that the government mandated people cannot go into work, cannot meet in groups of more than 10 people, and forced private businesses to shut down. If someone cites free virus testing as a small form of Medicare-for-all, make sure to remind them of the late response by the government on making sure test kits were available and the rationing of testing for people showing symptoms. My point here is not to suggest a completely free market health care system would solve all these problems. In fact, it is one of the few obligations of the U.S. federal government to respond to these types of emergencies. But my point is these are the types of mandated actions the government can take once they have control of a private industry, and control over our social lives in exchange for a monthly paycheck. No one should be using this crisis to sell socialism and leave out the parts they do not find appealing.
Another silly idea floating around is the suggestion that calling coronavirus the “Wuhan Virus” or a “Chinese Virus” is somehow racist. Let us set aside the fact that Chinese is not a race but a nationality. Describing a disease by where is originally came from is common (see the Spanish flu for example). Before the media started to circulate the “racist dog whistle” narrative, they used it themselves quite often as shown in a great video put together by a conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center. Seems to have only become racist if President Trump uses it. For those who are using this new virus to attack Chinese people, let me suggest, you are an a** hole.
This brings me to my next point, the hammer must come down hard on China once we take control of this outbreak. China is not responsible for creating this virus, but they are fully responsible for spreading it. Yes, I said in the beginning of this article to not use blame as a lesson to take away from this crisis, but it is important to know how to avoids crises like this in the future. There is a great mini-documentary put together by Vox, explaining why a large number of diseases come from China. China, being the utopia of communist authoritarianism it is, allowed the slaughter and distribution of wildlife meats as a luxury for the rich and powerful at the expense of the other 1.4 billion citizens of China. These wildlife meat markets, referred to as wet markets, included bats (in which Ebola likely came from), pangolins (in which COVID-19 likely came from), and endangered animals. The mini-documentary does a great job explaining how poorly the Chinese looks out for the interests of their people, and how this virus may have spread.
In addition to the conditions that allowed this virus to enter the human body, the Chinese government managed the situation in a way that would have made Joseph Stalin proud. You can see this in a piece by Axios that goes over the timeline of the outbreak in China and references a study by the University of Southampton that concludes if the Chinese government would have acted three weeks earlier to properly inform the world of the virus, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95%. But instead, China actively censored health care personnel from speaking out about the virus, destroyed evidence in labs at the beginning of the outbreak, and spread misinformation in an attempt to remove accountability from themselves. This is what happens when collective image supersedes individual freedoms as a matter of national policy.
Another bit of misinformation going around is the suggestion that President Trump dissolved the office responsible for pandemic preparedness before the outbreak. Tim Morrison, the person leading the directive assigned to make changes to the directorates responsible for pandemic preparedness at the time, wrote in The Washington Post that this narrative was incorrect. In Morrison’s article he stated the National Security Council (NSC), which governs the directorates responsible for pandemic preparedness, was “bloated” and “needed correction,” something the Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees, and members of the Obama Administration agreed on. President Trump did not “dissolve” the pandemic response team, he consolidated several directorates in one to create a stronger team of experts. I strongly recommend you read the article yourself because many media outlets and blue checkmarks on Twitter are still circulating this misinformation for political gain.
We need to do a better job at taking away the right lessons from a crisis like this. The first lesson we should have learned is stop making everything political. This leads to misinformation and panic not needed at times like this. The second lesson we should have learned is to consider others in a crisis like this. As a young person, you may have the attitude that you want to live your life and not be scared. This is easy when you are in a low-risk group during a pandemic, but the risk comes at the expense of spreading it to someone in a high-risk group. Be considerate to the elderly and immunocompromised because one day, you will be old or come down with an ailment that exposes you to higher risk. The third lesson we should have learned is how to build a community. Most of us have close friends and family for support but building a larger community to support each other in times like these is key. The mental burden of a self-quarantine or the prospect of coming down with a new illness can be more stressful than the illness itself. Social media and streaming services alone will not fill the hole left by little to no human contact. We are naturally social creatures who must build a community to survive. There are many more lessons to be taken away from this crisis, but the most important lesson is to support one another. We will make it through this.
P.S. If you are still reading, and I hope you are, I will be republishing my writing from my website on Medium so there may be some older stories I cover, although I do not often cover current events. I shut down my website because I have changed my main resource of communication and content hosting to Locals.com. Although I will be publishing my long-form written content on Medium, you can find my more regular content, podcasts, and interactive community at engineeringpolitics.locals.com. Please feel free to join this growing community if you want to stay up to date and/or support this content. Thank you for your consideration!
Note: None of the persons, podcasts, or books referenced above reflect my ideas and personal beliefs, nor should they be held accountable for anything published on this site in the future.
