Imagine how history will explain the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States

There will be many lessons that come out of the COVID-19 virus pandemic and while it is too soon to know exactly what they will be, several broad themes are already emerging. You can imagine them as seen by a historian, say in the year 2034, attempting to explain how the United States was staggered by a virus experts saw coming far in advance…

“This history is about how the COVID-19 Crisis exposed the hidden weaknesses in American public and private organizations, undermining their capacity to respond and how the public health effort failed, at the outset, because of the public’s deep mistrust of government and the media,” they might say.

“First, was the lack of surge capacity. In 2020, the U.S. relied on a for-profit health care system designed primarily for efficiency in creating profits. Meanwhile, political leaders had starved government health agencies for resources and pushed a lean, “right-sized” operation, without the “waste” of excess capacity needed in the crisis. This assured there would not be enough hospital beds, nurses and supply stockpiles of ventilators and masks to meet the demands for the long-predicted epidemic.

“Second, the ‘community spread’ nature of the virus revealed, sadly too late, that fixating on their differences hid that they were, in fact, all in this together. Not recognizing that the well-being on one was connected to the well-being of all, they failed to act as a community to resist the virus. Public health officials’ calls for self-quarantining, avoiding large crowds and following basic health instructions were thwarted by widespread mistrust, rumor and conspiracy theories.

“These two factors resulted from multiple interacting trends and forces that were present long before the COVID-19 Crisis.

“The erosion of government capacity began with a project to shift public perception about the role of government. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan declared, ‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.’ A concerted effort was launched to diminish government’s role in addressing the negative effects of unmanaged capitalism. This project included demeaning public servants, cutting budgets, busting unions, ignoring anti-trust laws, privatizing public services and deregulating health and environmental rules.

“This shift in the role of government not only reduced government’s capacity to act, it eventually led to unprecedented economic inequality that led most Americans to believe that government was not working on their behalf. By 2020, 7 of 10 Americans felt the system was unfair.

“The loss of community cohesion had multiple causes. In 2020, the effect of social media becoming the primary source of news proved devastating when it delayed the public’s containment actions. Fact based and carefully sourced news delivered through mass media to an entire community became replaced by individualized “news” feeds, with content curated by AI algorithms calculated to capture and hold the attention of the recipient, not provide facts. Public health professionals’ urgent appeals failed to persuade a population who consumed news designed to confirm their biases and promote the most provocative (viral) comments.

“Domestic politicians and foreign powers also used social media to individualize messages to forge electoral majorities. Some found the effectiveness of their messages required undermining the authority of established mainstream media such as declaring them purveyors of ‘fake news.’ This further eroded public trust in government leader’s efforts to rally Americans to shared action. While the virus multiplied, some politicians continued to employ the politics of division.”

What this fictional historian knows about the eventual outcome of the virus, our losses and our recovery, is for us yet to write. Perhaps we will see how our first contact with the novel virus’ DNA didn’t just change us at the cellular level. Perhaps it will also change the way we organize and think about our economic, political and social systems.

Like science fiction movies where it takes an alien invasion to drive home the point that we need to work together to survive, the novel life form COVID-19 might teach us how our individual well-being is inextricably tied to improving the well-being of our entire community.

I invite readers to contribute comments online about what they think we will learn from this crisis.

Larry Dzieza has been an Olympia resident since 1990 and recently retired from a public service career. Reach him at larryboc2020@gmail.com