What will we lose in the Name of Covid-19?
By Albert B. Kelly
There are these inflection points, moments in the arc of
history, when things happen and nothing is ever the same again. These moments
are fundamental shifts in the way things are, what we now call “the new normal”
which ends up being all of the things we learn to live with or tolerate or do
without, whether good or bad.
Think back to the way life was on September 10, 2001. Our
view of security and surveillance on that Monday was such that we as a nation
would have scarcely tolerated what has become the standard operating procedures
at our airports, stadiums, and other public and private venues. We certainly
would not have tolerated the type data-gathering on our most routine
communications by the NSA that’s now par for the course.
It is true that some of what we now accept as normal is
purely a product of the technologies that have been created since 2001, but I’m
really talking about our entire concept of privacy and what constitutes proper
boundaries that should not be crossed- all of that changed in a single 24-hour
period on a late summer afternoon nearly 2 decades ago. We gave up a lot in the
name of security and the need to feel safe (think Patriot Act) and there is no
way to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
My point is that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were just such
an inflection point, a crisis that shocked us, distracted us, scared us and set
the stage for a fundamental shift in the way we lived our lives. We didn’t ask
all of the questions we might have nor did we insist on the type of safeguards
we might have required had we had time to think during those autumn months when
we were trying desperately to get back to normal.
Fast forward to the financial crisis of 2008-2009, what
history now refers to as the “Great Recession”, that event wasn’t a single
shocking event as 9/11 was, but rather a few grim weeks when the experts were
talking about the economy going over a cliff and a complete meltdown of the
global financial system. In a 2017 article in the Atlantic, journalist Ann Lowrey talked about the impact of the
Great Recession pointing out that it “left scars in terms of housing and
wealth—with the rich getting richer and the poor recovering far less, if at all”.
According to Lowrey’s research, what came out of the
financial crisis for many was less access to credit, more struggle buying a
house, greater difficulty financing an education, nonexistent cash cushions for
emergencies, and more foreclosures and bankruptcies. I’m not an economist or
historian, but the new normal coming out of the Great Recession seems to be breath-taking
inequality.
What have we lost or given away as a result of the seismic
shift that took place in 2008 and early 2009? My guess is the death of the
American Dream and the placing of the middle class on life-support. I don’t
think it is a coincidence that the opioid epidemic seized this country on the
heels of the Great Recession, just as I don’t think it is a coincidence that
some of the most notable increases in mortality in recent years has been among middle
aged white men between the ages of 45 and 54 according to research from Angus
Deaton and Anne Case of Princeton University.
What we will we lose or give away in the name of Covid-19?
It is certainly too soon to tell, but it is worth thinking about because things
will never quite be the same again. Will we have some new type of medical
surveillance? Will people in quarantine have to submit to some new type of
tracking? What will become of the debate about vaccines?
This crisis will impact many areas beyond just healthcare whether
the push to go cashless, remote workplaces, the food supply, what constitutes
“essential”, and just about every corner of the economy. The question really
comes down to what monumental changes will be instituted in the name of
preparing for the next global pandemic and will these changes be acceptable to
us? It’s hard to say. If nothing else, we know we’re in unchartered territory because
beyond first responders and medical personnel, the real heroes of this crisis
are grocery store clerks- something to ponder as we stay at home.