My March 9, 2020 blog post was headed, “Don’t Panic, It’s Just Flu.” Within a few days, that looked pretty dumb. Less so five years later.
Early on, there was obviously a huge trade-off between Covid’s potential harm and the certain harms of trying to curb it via draconian measures like lockdowns. China had immediately imposed fierce restrictions on Wuhan, where Covid started — seemingly with much success, extended to many other places. But eventually that approach unraveled, China lifted all controls, and at least a million died. But before that, in 2020, lockdowns were quickly copied by many countries as the only way to go, with no real opportunity for public debate.
America though was very divided, and Covid fed fiendishly into the pre-existing political polarization. One side (me included) embraced masks and lockdowns as being what science dictated. The other side didn’t fancy dictation, making this a freedom issue. Opponents cast that as freedom to endanger your neighbors, with its advocates being anti-science yahoos.
But the waters were muddied by initial confusion within scientific and expert ranks. Yet voices of authority tended to sound arrogant rather than humble — saying “do this” instead of “this is our best guess right now, but we’re still working to figure things out.” Which was true; some early pronouncements proved wrong. (I recall wiping my mail before opening it!) The result was to undermine their authority and aggravate distrust toward all experts and elites. So guess what happened when vaccines arrived.
Sacrifice for the common good is a tough sell. A recent PBS documentary showed Los Angeles citizens riled up by terrible smog in the 1950s. But when, to curb it, they were asked to stop burning trash (a common thing), they rebelled against that. Similarly, few people seem willing to inconvenience themselves to combat planet-wrecking climate change. Covid lockdowns allowed no choice. No surprise that was widely resented. It didn’t help that this also became a free speech issue, with dissident voices squelched. The result was to accentuate an already rampant decline in social trust generally, and with it community feeling, hence amplifying people’s sense of alienation and isolation. Aggravated all the more by their home confinement.
All this was part of the cost of battling Covid. Lives were saved. But how many? Hard to say, actually. Though Sweden offers a clue. An outlier among European nations that rushed to lock down, Sweden never mandated masks or staying at home; most schools stayed open. Yet, a year later, Sweden had one of Europe’s lowest Covid death rates. Maybe because Swedes are very public spirited and behaved sensibly without being forced to. Perhaps other countries would have fared better just urging masking and staying at home, rather than requiring that.
But Americans like me were critical of red states that resisted lockdowns and quickly reopened. Yet their Covid death rates turned out no worse than in goody-two-shoes blue states. Until, that is, vaccines arrived. Then red states looked more like death traps — having far more anti-vaxxers. Lockdowns may have been legitimately debatable, but not vaccines.
Poorer Americans suffered more than the affluent. Being likelier to lose jobs and income, and while white collar folks could often work remotely, blue collar types had to show up — exposing themselves to the virus. While being less equipped to cope with illness. And less able to afford care for children kept out of schools.
Their closure soon seemed ill conceived, with the dangers to children of being in class proving limited and manageable. But teacher unions strove to keep schools shut as long as possible — nice to get paychecks while not working. A bigger factor in blue states with politically stronger unions.
That the harm of school closures outweighed any benefits now does seem clear. Here too, poorer families were especially hurt. All kids suffered educational setbacks, losing ground that they’ll probably never make up, a lifelong negative impact. But worse again for poorer children, less able to benefit from remote learning, due to both cost and less conducive home/neighborhood environments.
So the Covid lockdowns worsened our divide between the poor and the affluent. They also made for an inflation surge, thanks to supply chain disruptions and governments spewing money into the economy. And, further, lockdowns had big psychological effects, many people unable to cope well with the isolation and disruption.
In sum, would we have been better off treating Covid — as my cited 3/9/20 blog post suggested — more like just a bad flu, rather than turning the world upside down?
Covid also, as mentioned, did worsen our political divide. And it psychically discombobulated voters enough to insanely elect as president a convicted felon who’d tried to overthrow the government. Whose handling of Covid itself in 2020 was shambolically idiotic. (Remember bleach?) Now he’s decimated federal health-related funding, including vaccine development, and put an anti-vax crackpot (RFK Jr) in charge of it all; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is in turmoil. Disastrous if another pandemic hits.
In fact, we’re not even really done with Covid.
And America today is a sicker country.
The Rational Pessimist 
