Winning and losing pandemic wars

Last update: Wednesday 2/24/21

 

There seems to be widespread agreement that the primary goal of our total war against the coronavirus is to save as many lives as possible. This is not surprising given the fact that we have allowed health care experts, i.e., doctors and other medical specialists, to oversee our war efforts. 

Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that this narrow goal is profoundly unwise and is, perhaps, a major source of our dissatisfaction with the quality of the lives we have been forced to live since the pandemic began and our anxiety about the "new normal" that awaits us at the war's end. No one doubts that we will win this war, but there is cause for concern that we might lose the peace that follows. 

Our self-imposed condition is as ironic as it is unwise. The 1918 Spanish flu killed almost 700,000 Americans at a time when our population was about one third of what it today. Comparable deaths from the coronavirus would have to rise from 500.000 where it is now to 3 times 700,000 = 2,100,000 for the coronavirus to inflict comparable mortalities.  There was no nationwide effort to curtail the Spanish flu back then, no presidential task force of experts on infectious diseases, no multi-trillion dollar recovery programs, and no nationwide or statewide lockdowns. Yet the Spanish flu was followed by the Roaring Twenties, one of the most exciting, economically vibrant, culturally creative, and socially progressive periods in our nation's history, a golden age during which the quality of life seemed to improve for everyone. In other words, the U.S. made little or no effort to win the war against the Spanish flu, but the peace that followed was fabulous.