Summary: America’s experience with COVID-19 provides powerful lessons for us about the world and especially about ourselves. With these we can become stronger.
Lessons about science from Gilligan’s Island!
The Professor on Gilligan’s Island was a master of all sciences. We’ve learned from climate change and now COVID-19 that’s not just fiction – as scientists with no relevant training or experience confidently make bold analysis about these issues. As if all that time spent on specialty training was unnecessary. Human nature at work: big statements about hot issues are the fast track to fame in America, and the press is more interested in clicks than validity. The IPCC’s work is boring, as is that of WHO and the CDC. Much more profitable for the news media to headline scientists with little relevant expertise predicting the end of the world.
Of course, in America everybody’s opinion is just as good as any expert’s. So the internet overflows with big conclusions about hot issues by people with little or no relevant training. COVID-19 has brought forth a bumper crop of these. They have numbers and graphs, so they must be worth reading! Especially by people with no ability to determine their validity. These people use a mish-mash of data from many sources, using widely different definitions, usually with gross errors in reasoning. WHO has repeatedly warned about these in their daily media briefings. My favorites are the graphs comparing the number of cases in nations of widely varying population and geographic size (e.g., comparing the number of cases in Singapore, Finland, and China) – chart junk.
In this article, science writer Tom Chivers gives a clear summary of the complexities in modeling an epidemic. Reading it makes clear why actual experts (who have reputations at risk, unlike amateurs seeking their 15 minutes) have been reluctant to make predictions until recently. And then only tentatively, as in this by Dr. Fauci on March 29.
“Looking at what we’re seeing now, I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths. We’re going to have millions of cases. But I don’t think that we really need to make a projection, when it’s such a moving target, that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.”
The worm of mistrust has eaten away at America
Strong social cohesion has long been one of America’s greatest strengths, carrying us through tough times such as the Great Depression and the social turmoil of 1965 – 1975. It helped keep oppressed groups loyal even when mistreated (African-Americans since the start, Japanese-American interned during WWII but many nonetheless served in the armed forces). For good reason e pluribus unum (one from many) was the national motto (as faith in God faded in America, Congress virtue signaled in 1956 by making “In God we trust” the motto.
That’s all burnt powder. Now identity politics fractures America, just as multiculturalism makes it difficult to assimilate the flood of new immigrants (as social scientists have warned for 20 years). Worse, our confidence in America’s institutions has been declining for five decades. For example, see the scary trends from Gallup’s Confidence in Institutions surveys (the exceptions are police and the military, scary news in a different way).
Worst of all, our mistrust of America’s institutions is rational. The Boy Scouts, the Roman Catholic Church, and uncounted numbers of other institutions have proven themselves unworthy of our trust (a young man recently died in a hazing incident in my chapter of my college fraternity). For more about this, see A new, dark picture of America’s future. As for our largest institution, government officials routinely lie to us about vital matters (see the Big List of their Lies).
Look to the future!
All of these problems are manageable during good times. The combination makes coping with a crisis like COVID-19 difficult. In almost every way, America was one of the best-prepared nations for an epidemic (details here). We had two months to prepare. The combination should have put us in a strong position when it hit hard in March. Instead, our institutions have repeatedly fumbled. Our response has been uncoordinated. Our leaders, especially Trump and Pence (head of the White House Task Force) have been often counter-productive (Pence is MIA).
In some way we see our weakness, and how other nations have handled COVID-19 better. Especially China. Our most frequent response shows what might be our greatest weakness: all evidence of China’s better response are met by screams of “China lies” or “China is evil” (for examples, see the comments on the FM website). A recent article in Science described China’s success suppressing COVID-19 and their progress beginning to restart their society: “Can China return to normalcy while keeping the coronavirus in check?” by Dennis Normile. We should watch and learn from them. It was pretty much ignored. My post describing it and other articles about China’s restart got the fewest hits of any in the past year. We can maintain our self-image as Number One only by closing our eyes. No amount of wealth and power can offset such self-destructive behavior.
Now America is mobilizing at every level to fight COVID-19. Our great resources are slowly focusing on ways to contain its spread, mitigate its damage, and eventually eradicate it. Now we should begin the long slow process of discovery. COVID-19 has revealed our weaknesses for all to see. Let’s dig deep to see how all this happened and how we can fix it. This is a Republic. It is our responsibility to fix it. There are no others who can or should do so.
It’s easy to follow the COVID-19 story
The World Health Organization provides daily information, from highly technical information to news for the general public. These are the best sources of information.
- There is their daily situation report, with detailed numbers.
- The Director-General of WHO gives frequent briefings, which are quite insightful.
- Their daily press briefings have more information. An audio goes up afterwads. They post a transcript the next day.
Also, see the wealth of information at the CDC website, especially their situation reports.
Posts about effects of COVID-19
- Hidden news about the epidemic sweeping across America! – Fake news drives out good news.
- A devastating epidemic spreads across America – An epidemic of panic and ignorance.
- COVID-19 will hit the world economy hard. Here’s how.
- Prepare now in case they close the stock market.
- The key to surviving the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The info superhighway makes us stupid about COVID-19.
- Prepare now for a coming COVID-19 depression.
- Blaming China soothes an America fighting COVID-19.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a powerful and disturbing story about “Birth of a Man of Steel …for the Soviet Union.”
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also, see these posts about epidemics…
- See the ugly cost of the next big flu pandemic. We can do more to prepare.
- Stratfor: The superbugs are coming. We have time to prepare.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2009 swine flu in America.
- Posts debunking the hysteria about the 2015 ebola epidemic in America.
- Important: A vaccine against the fears that make us weak.
A medieval city defeats a plague
Florence Under Siege:
Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City
By John Henderson (2019), professor of Italian renaissance history at U of London.
I strongly recommend reading this fascinating review of it in the London Review of Books, with its great excerpts. From the publisher …
“Plague remains the paradigm against which reactions to many epidemics are often judged. Here, John Henderson examines how a major city fought, suffered, and survived the impact of plague. Going beyond traditional oppositions between rich and poor, this book provides a nuanced and more compassionate interpretation of government policies in practice, by recreating the very human reactions and survival strategies of families and individuals.
“From the evocation of the overcrowded conditions in isolation hospitals to the splendor of religious processions, Henderson analyzes Florentine reactions within a wider European context to assess the effect of state policies on the city, street, and family. Writing in a vivid and approachable way, this book unearths the forgotten stories of doctors and administrators struggling to cope with the sick and dying, and of those who were left bereft and confused by the sudden loss of relatives.”
