The Senate hearings a few weeks ago that were supposedly about the origins of the Covid virus were a disappointment. We need a better understanding of the pandemic and our responses to it, but what we got was an attempt to blame and shame rather than a serious proceeding to obtain and share information. We need to understand what happened and what can be improved for the next pandemic, which will inevitably come. We did not get that.
A starting point should be that Covid was deadly for many. Steven Macedo and Frances Lee wrote an informative book about the subject, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (2024). It horrifically reports that an estimated 1.7 million people in the United States died because of the pandemic. Most of the deaths were directly from Covid, but some excess deaths during the pandemic were from causes not directly related to the virus but from other conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and homicide. Macedo and Lee stress time and again that our policies produced collateral consequences that were not always understood at the time. For example, the lockdowns led to fewer health visits and increased stress. These subsequently led to increased deaths.
We, of course, want to lessen deaths, but how should we address other less visible harms that may develop over a longer period? For example, every state closed their schools in March 2020 causing, according to Macedo and Lee, the most significant educational disruption in history. These schools remained closed long after it was clear that they were not important drivers of community infection.
Examples like this raise questions about how to set, and perhaps even more important, reset policies, particularly when there is fast developing but incomplete information, some of which will turn out to have been inconsistent. Authorities who have implemented rules and guidelines will find it hard to change what has been previously ordained. The authority will feel–at least subconsciously–that any change will seem like an admission that what was set before was a mistake, even if it was the best choice utilizing the currently available information. It is hard to change course especially when that course is public and has affected others. Under these circumstances, human nature resists new information that contradicts what has already been decided. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, it was assumed that Covid affected all ages at the same rate. Portions of Italy were among the first places to be hard hit by Covid, and reports from there indicated that those under forty were at low risk, while the aged were at high risk. That information took too long a time to influence the United States. Schools remained closed longer than they needed to. Although a shibboleth states that states trying out different ideas serve as a laboratory of democracy—one state tries something and other states learn from it. Some states relied on strict non-pharmaceutical interventions—social distancing, masking, lockdowns. These made some sense in light of the fact that early reports indicated that China contained the spread of Covid with them. It was soon clear (to some), however, that states that implemented these tactics did not have better mortality outcomes, while states with high vaccination rates did. This knowledge did not seem to affect state or local policies. New York did not try to learn from Florida, and Florida did not try to learn from Michigan.
In Covid’s Wake avers that the most difficult question was balancing harm from Covid itself versus the harms stemming from Covid policies. How, for example, do we weigh decreased deaths against decreased childhood learning? Can we justify decreased hospitalizations if it means hardship imposed on the economically disadvantaged–on those who disproportionately lost their jobs, saw their children fall behind in school, and suffered more from Covid disease and death because they comprised the bulk of our “essential workers”? Macedo and Lee contend that it was an error of Covid policy to give too much power to public health officials whose narrow concerns and expertise focus only on morbidity and not on the collateral consequences of public health interventions. Is that something we should learn?
The authors maintain that legislatures should have played a bigger part in setting Covid policies. Looking at the problem theoretically, this might be right. Elected representatives are supposed to be the prime policymakers weighing the costs and benefits of public policies. In practice, however, how nimbly can legislatures perform during a pandemic when information is fast-developing, and policies need constant reevaluation and possible revision? Legislatures are too cumbersome to assimilate new data and quickly alter the course that has been set.
Legislatures also do not seem to be ideal bodies to deal with rampant misinformation and disinformation. Macedo and Lee posit that elite groups–like medical and scientific professional–have a tendency for groupthink that reinforces their own biases. They argue that we should be hesitant of giving these professionals the power to police the “truth.” Their conclusion, however, does not tell us how to determine what is misinformation and disinformation, who should make the determination, or how to deal with misinformation and disinformation once it is identified. History shows that we cannot just pretend it will not have an effect.
