Category: Commentary

Or Christopher Columbus, if you prefer. Either way, it is hard to think of an historical figure about whom more wrong things have been said. And not just wrong, but truly perfidious, bordering on calumny. Or in more modern ways, he’s been dissed.

So as we come upon another celebration of Columbus Day–or Indigenous People’s Day if you prefer–let’s set the record straight.

Starting with the silly complaints, no, Columbus did not discover North America. He landed in the Caribbean and eventually on the South American coast, but never the North America mainland. And various others had come from Europe to the Western Hemisphere before him: none of them documented the travel in a verifiable way, nor left an explanation which could permit their trail to be followed. All of which makes this complaint entirely irrelevant. Before Columbus, explorers were unsure what lay west of Europe; after, they knew what was there, and how to get there and back. That was a tremendous achievement. Look, we knew what the moon was, where it was, and what we would find there long before Apollo 11 landed, but no one thought that “one small step for (a) man” was anything other than a “giant leap for mankind.”

Next, there is the question of motivation. Modern revisionist historians claim Columbus went west for money and glory. This is partly true. Constantinople had fallen just forty years earlier, so all trade with what Europe called the Orient had to pass though Muslim lands. Columbus believed he could detour by going west, and bring the riches home free of interference. But why? He wished to (1) spread the Catholic faith (he was third order Franciscan), and (2) he wanted to fund a crusade to recover Jerusalem. He already had a comfortable existence as a sea captain, but he did crave more fame, and he wanted to do something he thought would merit him Heaven. This is hard for moderns to believe, as I have pointed out before. He left money in his will for such a crusade.

Which leads us to his behavior. Columbus was a sea captain, with the power of life and death. He was not used to being a land Governor, but that was the deal he made with the Spanish Crown. He expected to be conducting trade negotiations with the Indians or Chinese, not supervising naked natives or suppressing human sacrifices. But that was what he had to do. He was alternately too lax and too cruel, and this was a real failing on his part. Many of the abuses cited against him happened under his watch, but not under his direct supervision, as he sailed around the Carib Sea or back and forth four times to Spain. He did direct an atrocity when one tribe revolted (and eliminated a Spanish garrison), killing many and enslaving the rest, but this was the standard of his time. The losing side in any battle or war was taken in slavery.

The idea Columbus went west looking for slaves to get rich is utterly ridiculous. There were tens of thousands of slaves available for sale in Africa. Anyone seeking to make a fortune in slave trading need only follow the well-worn sea lanes south to the African slave ports, where African tribes were quite ready to sell other (defeated) tribes into slavery. Remember, Columbus thought he was discovering a shortcut to China, so slavery was not his motivation. He did say that the native Taino people were easy to control and would “make great servants/slaves” (Note that you’ll only see that last quote rendered as “slaves” by many, but it translates correctly either way). Why were the Taino that way? The Taino Columbus met were pacific, and were preyed upon by the neighboring Carib tribes, who practiced cannibalism and kept the Taino as a food source! The Taino were eager to ingratiate themselves with the Spaniards, who were brutal but not looking for a Taino entree.

Many of the harshest accusations revisionist historians raise stem directly from the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Bobadilla. The former was a Spanish priest who documented many of the worst acts committed by Spanish leaders in the New World. Yet on Columbus, he wrote “The admiral should have taken pains to bring love and peace and to avoid scandalous incidents, for not to perturb the innocent is a precept of the evangelical law who’s messenger he was. Instead, he inspired fear and displayed power, declared war and violated a jurisdiction that was not his but the Indians…” and also “Truely (sic), I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions were good. But…the road he paved and the things he did of his own free will, as well as sometimes under constraint, stemmed from his ignorance of the law (editor’s note: i.e., the Gospel).” De las Casas presents no strong case against Columbus.

As to de Bobadilla, he authored an investigation that is the basis for most of the revisionist historian charges against Columbus. But he was scheming to replace Columbus from early on, and his account of charges must be viewed in that light. He succeeded in having Columbus recalled to Spain, but there Columbus was ultimately freed, although he lost his titles and lands in the New World (to de Bobadilla, among others). The Spanish Crown was more displeased at the disorder in its new colonies than in the inhumane (by current standards) behavior of its Governors.

What of the charge of genocide? Genocide is the intentional elimination of a nation or group. Columbus may have been violent by modern standards (although hardly by the standards of his time), he may have been unfair, but he never imagined his encounter with the natives peoples of the Americas would result in their demise. Diseases were misunderstood at the time, and he had no way of knowing or understanding the locals’ inability to deal with the endemic diseases his crew carried. He did nothing to prevent or further the spread, as he didn’t know how. If Columbus had bowed down to the native Gods, dropped off his armor and renounced Spain to become a Taino, nothing would have changed. All (over 95%) of the natives would have died in the next ten years. This is not genocide, as no one intended it.

Does Columbus deserve a national holiday and statues in parks? What we celebrate speaks to what we respect and honor. If we demand perfection in our heroes, we’d have only statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. But do his acknowledged faults disqualify him? Every historical figure must be judged against his or her times, and by their specific accomplishments. Woodrow Wilson brought freedom and self-determination to millions in Europe, but he was an avowed racist and supported eugenic policies. FDR was one of our greatest Presidents, a superb wartime political leader, who ordered both the round-up of Japanese Americans and denied the entry of Jewish refugees. Nelson Mandela proved stronger than the chains of apartheid, but he was once a member of the Communist Party and planned terrorist attacks. And so it goes.

What Columbus did would have been accomplished by someone, eventually. Yet he was the first, and many failed before he succeeded. His failures were real, too, but within the standards for his time. On balance, he merits his due.

There once was a man who proclaimed he was a fan. When he saw other fans cheering and shouting for the team, he said “I, too, am a fan” and they gladly welcomed him.

Prior to the next game, all the fans met for a party wearing their team’s colors, but the man did not wear them. The other fans chided him, but he told them he was just as much a fan as they were. They teased him some more, but still accepted him, as he said he was a fellow fan.

When the day of the big game arrived, the man attended the tailgate party, still wearing his usual attire. As the other fans cleared the party to go into the stadium, the man began to leave. “Where are you going?” they asked, “come with us to the game!” “I don’t have a ticket,” he said, and walked away. The other fans were sad, but they had no extra tickets, so they said goodbye and went to the game.

The day after the big victory, the other fans were still celebrating when they saw the man once again. “We’re sorry you couldn’t attend the game; wasn’t it great” they asked? ” The man responded, “I didn’t watch it.” “What!?!” they exclaimed, “were you so angry about not having a ticket that you refused to watch the game?” “No, I just didn’t watch it” he replied, and walked away.

The other fans were perplexed. They debated what kind of fan the man was, and what they should do. The next time they all gathered, they began asking the man about the team. He did not know the players, or the coach. He did not know much about the team’s record or statistics or history. He had some childhood memories of his family being fans, wearing the colors, some big games and celebrations. The other fans were incredulous: “why do you call yourself a fan?”

The man replied, “You don’t have to attend every game, or follow every player, or only wear the colors to be a fan. I can choose to be a fan whether I do these things or not. I can be a fan of the team while walking in the woods, or watching a show on TV, or surfing the net. You create all these rules about ‘who is’ or ‘is not’ a fan, but I am free to choose my own rules.”

The other fans were speechless. One of them asked, “ok, but are you happy when we win? Are you devastated when we lose? Does it matter at all to you?”

The man said, “Why is it so important to you? Sometimes I get emotional, but in the end, no, it’s just not that important, unless I want it to be. I am ultimately the one in charge of my status of being a fan.” And he walked away.

When the fans next gathered, the man came again. The fans did not try to argue with or convince him, for they had nothing to say to him. He could not talk to them about the game, or his favorite players, or how he felt about the officiating, or anything about the team. While he said he was a fan, the other fans had nothing in common with him. Eventually the man came less frequently, and finally he stopped attending all the fan events.

The man felt the other fans had abandoned him. He thought they judged him, and did not accept him as he was. But he knew he was still a fan. He had said so. He alone made that choice, and in the end, that was all that mattered to him.

Given the planet just endured two-plus years of pandemic with millions of deaths, thousands of cases of “long-Covid”, numerous business and personal bankruptcies and major disruption of travel and supply chains, you might expect some major changes to the world going forward. Based on history, if you do so, you will be wrong!

For the most part, what will change? Mostly those things that were already changing. And some will revert a little after more profound initial change! Why? Pandemics are by definition unusual periods, and even when they occur more frequently (we’ve been 100 years between them), they primarily are experienced as something odd which only heightens the desire for normalcy: to get back to the way things were. Historians have spilled much ink on why the Spanish Flu pandemic back in 1918-21 period caused so many casualties (roughly ten times more deaths than Covid, against a global population 1/4 as large!) but had so few lasting effects. Once it was done, people were done with it. You can see this happening with the corona virus already, even though we’re technically not out of the woods yet. But there are some trends which were accelerated by the pandemic, and those changes will prove more lasting. They are:

1. Work-Life balance. Many people (especially in the US) began to re-evaluate whether they were living to work or working to live, and whether success really is a matter of how many toys you can acquire before you die and go into the great nothingness that lies beyond. Classic wisdom already taught these lessons, and Christianity reinforced them, but they were lost among the Boomers and Gen X’rs. The terrifying possibility of random death from an unseen virus had the salutary effect of focusing the mind on what’s important. Sadly, this will be a temporary effect, as if you have no classic learning or faith-driven worldview to fall back on, one will gradually fall back into the same old bad habits. Already some took the wrong lesson that life is so short, random, and purposeless that it’s okay to jettison spouses, leave children, quit jobs or whatever else you need to do to define your own happiness if but for a fleeting moment. But not everyone, and in the meantime, people are considering their options. Working less, spending more time with family, acquiring less.
2. Virtual/online work and services. These were already a thing, but got a big boost during the pandemic. Backsliding? Sure. Yes, it’s great to order things online, but given the opportunity to see something first, feel it or try it on, there will always be some pull to do just that. As to work, the lessons of online organizational behavior are well understood and have not been changed by the pandemic. High functioning teams need to work together in person first; then they can move to remote or online coordination of activities. The military has lived this way since the dawn of the radio. You train together, you establish standards and ways of doing things, you create communication procedures, and then you can go out and be geographically -distant but still interact successfully. The reverse is not the case. So all the moves toward work-from-home will first involve some portion of working together in an office to establish team-building, norm-setting, and patterns of behavior before going virtual. Of course if your job literally requires no coordination with others, you might be able to go full time at home. But . . .
3. White collar offshoring. Most people are familiar with what happened during the “China shock” when much of the world’s production got moved to cheaper producers, first in China and then elsewhere in SouthEast Asia. In the States, it hollowed out the manufacturing base, leading to huge job losses, increasing poverty in the middle of the nation, and more deaths of despair. The pandemic showed that many white collar jobs can be done from home, and such workers used this leverage to spend far more time that way: congratulations to them. Of course, what can be done away from the office can be done at home, or can be done very far away from home (i.e., offshore). Some of this was already apparent: before the pandemic, there was a growing market for accountants and tax advisers based in India, speaking English, and specializing in low-cost services targeted to US laws. That will grow in the future, and will directly challenge the work-from-home gains of the white collar workers.
4. Generational fragility. There was a generation once-upon-a-time that was born into horse-drawn travel (circa 1886) and lived to see the moon landing (1969). They witnessed rampant diseases, several world wars, the upending of dynasties and empires, and vast technological and social change. They didn’t even get a fancy nickname, and what they experienced was just called life. The pandemic has induced huge increases in social pathology among Millenials (born 1981-1996) and Gen Z (born 1997-2012). Young adults are saying they face an unhappy future with too much debt, a destroyed climate, and poor work prospects. School children are demonstrating increasing rates of self-harm, mental illness, and other destructive behaviors up to and including suicidal ideation. The sight of society’s adult leaders (mostly Boomers or older) running around in a panic didn’t help. I won’t go all Boomer here and point out the facts of today’s world don’t fit well with the Millenial or Gen Z complaints. The fact is that’s how they feel and they’re making themselves sick over it. It was bad before the pandemic; it got worse during the pandemic. Generations (remember, all individuals are different) rarely change their spots over time.
5. Pay for the low-end of the work scale. Inequality was actually ebbing during the Trump years before the pandemic. Data during the pandemic will be skewed by temporary government programs and policies, but I suggest when the data returns to normal, we’ll see more positive news here. Why? Partly because the pandemic created an imbalance between the number of jobs (many) and the number of workers (fewer) which forced pay increases. Some of this pressure will be relieved by automation and increased immigration. But if America’s economy keeps gowing in the long run, and some younger workers decide not to compete but to redefine success, there won’t be enough supply for the demand in many essential jobs like teachers, police, etc. Which will lead to many changes, one of which will be better pay for those remaining.
6. A renewed health care debate (in the US). Nobody likes the US health care system, mostly because it is not a system, it is a patchwork of compromises between States, the federal government, and various lobbies (Big Pharma, doctors, lawyers, hospitals, and investment firms). No sane person would design this “system.” It is expensive and exclusionary (sometimes your insurance doesn’t guarantee any care). However, it performs some tasks better than its rivals. It innovates better, producing more new drugs, procedures, and equipment. Why? Because one can make a ton of money when you do so. It offers better preventive medicine, because that is cost effective. It offers more choices than any other system, although those choices are not equally available. In effect, the US system is the perfect American complement. It complements the many state-run health systems throughout the world by being the high-risk, high payoff health care lab. It complements the American character because it lets you choose to have as much or as little health care as you want, and from exactly the doctor you like. And it complements the legal system by being a source of endless lawsuits, whether of little merit or tremendous consequence. How will the pandemic effect on American health care play out? None of the large government systems did better. Big Pharma did find a vaccine. Some Americans lacked health care and simply died because of it. My guess is little will change here, with perhaps the addition of a catastrophic care regime available to all, financed by the state and federal governments.
7. Speaking of government, I intended to say here that national health authorities must have learned a lot about what not to do, and that should serve us well going forward with communicable diseases. I intended to say that until the monkeypox virus came along and demonstrated that those same health officials (in the US at least) who loudly called for following the science were just as capable as Donald Trump of ignoring the science when it gored a favorite ox. Monkeypox is an endemic African disease that occasionally slips out of the continent and quickly dissipates because it takes sustained contact to spread. The current monkeypox global health emergency was traced to random group sex events in Europe among men who have sex with men. Over 99% of the cases fell into this group; others were secondarily tied (e.g., family members). Rather than broadcast these facts, health officials continued to say “everyone is at risk” and not make the obvious call for voluntary cancellation of high-risk events planned for Pride month. They left a serious but treatable disease to spread among a vulnerable population because they feared the possibility of fomenting homophobia. Anybody associated with this fiasco should be fired. Let’s hope the remaining health authorities learn from this case before the next one hits.

8. Cinema is dead; movies are dying. Movie theater revenues plateaued before the pandemic, as they increasingly raised prices to make up for fewer tickets sold. The pandemic shut them down, and while they experienced some immediate recovery when restrictions were lifted, they retain the same problems as before: ridiculous prices, aging infrastructure, poor quality product (Fast & Furious XXV?), and competition from the stay-at-home-and-stream experience. There will always be cinemas, just like there are still some drive-ins. But they will become a niche product for certain wide-screen, or 3D, or “big event” films. Likewise, I’ll posit the movie as an artform is in serious trouble. Think about the great years for movies: 1939 (Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Mr. Smith goes to Washington); 1982 (ET, Gandhi, Blade Runner, and Sophie’s Choice); 1976 (Rocky, Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men, and Network); 1962 (Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Manchurian Candidate). Today’s hits are often retreads, remakes, or action movies resembling video games. If you want to make money, you drag the story out on a streaming service. Audiences reward instant action and no character development: the cinematic equivalent of junk food. The only thing which consistently succeeds is excess: more violence, more sex, more action in less time. Movies were a medium that rewarded clever story-telling captured in a finite time (two or so hours) and a finite space (the cinema). That environment is going, going gone, both physically (cinemas) and metaphorically (the audience).

9. Nationalism. Often confused with fascism by those who understand neither, there was a growing trend toward greater nationalism (a preference for one’s own country at the expense of others) before the pandemic, and the corona virus highlighted the reasons why. In the end, nations have governments which look out for their people: even dictators need means to address the desires of the population, if only to control them. When the corona virus stuff hit the fan, free-travel Europe became “let me see your papers Europe” again. Island nations locked down, even from close neighbors (I’m looking at you, New Zealand). Countries withheld personal protective gear destined for others; the US even reached out to corner the market on some vaccines. Nations looked out for themselves, as they always have. Charles de Gaulle was right: “No nation has friends, only interests.” People got all wrapped up in the bonhomie of globalism and travel and “aren’t we all the same deep down underneath?” The short answer is “yes” until it isn’t. So look for more national (vice global) approaches going forward.

Sorry, that’s all I have. I hope you have found these musings on Covid interesting. If you think I left something important out, please add it in the comments. As for me, I swear off any more covid posting!

Part three of four.

It may seem odd to talk about “winners” when reconsidering a global pandemic, but there were individuals and groups that gained prestige, publicity, or some other advantage as a result. It was unintentional but nonetheless true. They were:

1. Doctors & Nurses (including all the medical staff here, too). While hospitals may have suffered financially, the heroic efforts of doctors, nurses, and staff to provide relief and comfort was the #1 heartwarming story of the pandemic. Oftentimes they were the only ones there while quarantined patients took their last breath, comforting them before somehow moving on to the next gasping patient. How they did this for so long, under such tough conditions, is truly remarkable. There are hundreds of impassioned video shorts about them already. Movies will be made, books written about their heroism, all the while being in close contact with the same deadly virus. They deserve it, one and all.

2) Teachers. Hey, aren’t you the same guy who called the teachers’ unions “losers”? Yes. But the teachers themselves merit praise. Anyone who has tried to conduct any organizational effort online knows how hard it is. Teachers got handed an impromptu script for “online learning” and somehow pulled it off. Then they had to return to classrooms with masks and social distancing and quarantines and make that work. We know it wasn’t as good as in-person learning. We know it failed in many cases. But that wasn’t the teachers’ fault, and certainly not for lack of trying. Whatever stupidity their unions came up with, the teachers themselves gave one-hundred percent effort.

3) Employees/workers, especially those blue collar types who found themselves labelled “essential.” That label must have been a surprise, given the pay they normally receive. They had to keep going out, keep being exposed, even when they had no health care insurance or sick leave. But in the end, the imbalance between job vacancies and employees in many fields has given them new-found bartering power, and many are switching jobs or careers or just getting a raise. Sadly, this imbalance won’t last much longer, so here’s hoping they all come out at least a little happier and financially healthier.

4) Proponents of early government actions. Which government actions? In the long run it didn’t really matter. The hard part in a global pandemic is getting the people to realize life has suddenly changed in a way it hadn’t before in their lifetime. Doing something at the national level is key to forging that understanding. So while stopping flights or closing borders or ordering mask mandates are all only temporarily beneficial, they send the message. Leaders who did so had more success during the pandemic.

5) Candidate Joe Biden. And I say this not just because President Trump was the biggest pandemic loser. Biden benefited from a pandemic primary in which his strongest opponent (Sanders) was a firebrand promising big change. In response, Joe was the steady one. During the general election, the pandemic provided a handy excuse to limit his public exposure: few gaffes, no stumbling or shuffling around, no exhaustion on the campaign trail. In a regular election, this would have failed, but during a pandemic, it seemed quite normal. Thus a man who ran three times for President and never got more than 1% in any of his aborted campaigns received over eighty-one million votes, the most in US presidential history. The corona virus gave Biden more votes than Kamala Harris ever did.

6) Big Pharma. About half of viral vaccines fail before Phase I (human trials). The success rate from Phase I to Phase III is under twenty percent. The labs and the scientists were working under the same social distancing and quarantine protocols as the rest of the world (although they were probably more used to that!). Somehow Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca produced different, successful vaccines in less than a year. Yes, governments showered money on them. More importantly, governments closely supervised the process to ensure safety while maximizing speed, and insured the efforts so that–if they failed–the drug-makers would not get sued or go bankrupt. Russia and China “borrowed” concepts or blueprints and came out with suboptimal results. Big Pharma, not government-run health, came through in the pinch, end of story.

7) Knowledge workers. I mentioned how blue-collar types “won” in terms of respect, more options, and better pay. White-collar knowledge workers did too. These folks had been arguing for better work-life balance for years, and were gradually winning a battle for more work-from-home time. Be careful what you ask for, because they got it! While few if any jobs can be totally remote, the pandemic period of total work-from-home made a strong argument to re-evaluate what can and can’t be done outside the office, with much more being labeled as “can” than “can’t.” How to prevent this trend from becoming work-all-the-time is the new challenge for these workers.

8) E-commerce and online retailers. Whether it was Amazon or JD and Alibaba (China), online retailers made out in a big way. You could not go out and shop. You could not travel or spend on services like restaurants or clubs or gyms. There were no events. But the online marketplaces remained open, twenty-four/seven as they say, and business was good. In fact the inflationary effects of huge demand for products when supply was limited by both production shutdowns and shipping backlogs contributed greatly to our current economic problems. Even older cohorts who had disdained online commerce as unsafe moved into online banking and retailing, and they won’t be going back.

9) Streaming services. Cutting the cord was already a going trend, but the hours and hours of home stay provided the perfect opportunity to investigate ditching a cable bundle of thousands of worthless channels for a custom set of streaming apps with thousands of worthless shows. Kidding. Unlike cable bundles which had large upfront costs and infrastructure, streaming services were generally cheaper and disposable. Although many cable-cutters found that purchasing a series of streams was almost as expensive, they were more flexible, and those who ruthlessly watched and cancelled could come out ahead. The era of a nation watching a show on the telly was finally put to rest by the pandemic. At best now, we binge the same season at a time.

10) Taiwan. Some countries (sorry, China) get all the breaks. It’s an island, with a compliant population that trusts its government. It had a dry-run with the SARS epidemic. It is not that much of a tourist destination. And it knows mainland China all-too-well. Taiwan was the first to inform the World Health Organization (WHO) that China was lying about person-to-person transmission. Taiwan shut down travel links with the mainland early and introduced pretty draconian contact tracing and quarantines. Eventually they settled on a crowd-sourced QR code, with every person scanning the code as they entered a building (work, restaurant, store) which gave the government a real-time data base of where you were and when you were. If you didn’t have a smartphone, you signed in a register, or you didn’t get in. Shame worked well: people who got sick felt the need to apologize for not being careful. Taiwan made mistakes: they worked on their own vaccine, which was slow, and they did so well during the early phases of the pandemic that people were lax on getting vaccinated, which left them vulnerable to a wave when the mutations came. But overall their economy did well and they avoided the mass deaths and trauma so many other countries experienced. They looked especially good in comparison to the performance of their mainland rival.

Next post: What are the long-term effects of the pandemic?

Who had it worst during the corona virus pandemic, or ended up worse off as a result? First off, let’s exclude the millions of people who died. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, some just had terrible genetic luck (the virus seemed to target them directly regardless of their overall health), some had comorbidities that made them especailly vulnerable, and some fell victim to overcrowded hospitals or treatments which ultimately proved counter-productive. They weren’t “losers,” they were victims. I like the way comedian Norm MacDonald (who died from cancer last year) corrected the phrase that someone “lost a battle with cancer.” He said that was BS; you die, but so does your cancer. “That, to me, is not a loss. That’s a draw,” and he was right!

So here’s my list of corona virus losers:

(1) #1 with a bullet, as they say, is Donald Trump. This is a no-brainer. Whatever yout think of the man or of his presidency, he was riding a wave toward re-election. Yes, he continued to tweet and do outrageous things. But the economy was humming, the working poor were registering unprecedented gains in income relative to the wealthy, the long-running refugee flow across the southwest border had been slowed to a trickle (albeit by brutal methods), and even his forays into international policy hadn’t stumbled America into any new wars. A non-pandemic match-up against Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden would have been a lopsided win for Trump. Now the pandemic didn’t have to be a disaster for Trump, but it played on all his worst traits and exaggerated his worst tendencies. Having to rely on experts? Being told exactly what to say and when to say it? Throttling the economy with health restrictions? Sitting quietly through long public answers by people who work for him? Not being the center of attention? Avoiding going off half-cocked on new treatments or drugs? Trump was singularly unprepared for such a role and failed miserably, still almost eking out a win against a weak opponent.

(2) American Media. Perhaps this is related to the Biggest Loser, above, but the US media served horribly during the pandemic. They often fed the counternarrative battle that raged over everything Tump said or did, blindly going to the opposite extreme. Media in general were already held in low regard, but media performance during the pandemic only solidified their low position. The US media routinely understated the uncertainty involved in scientific efforts (vaccine efficacy, side effects, mortality rates, etc.,) and emphasized negative news, at least until the political situation changed. Foreign media sources were far more balanced and did a better job of handling uncertainty and avoiding politicization.

(3) Bureaucrats. Bureaucracy developed to bring standards and norms to the everyday operations of large organizations and governments. So it might be unfair to grade bureaucracy poorly for how it responded to an abnormal situation. But it still remains the case that during a crisis like a pandemic, the public requires some sense of normalcy and some level of competence despite the uncertainty; here is where the bureaucrats failed. The European Union couldn’t bring itself to indemnify vaccine manufacturers and ended up last in line for the drugs. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) completely mucked up the initial covid tests then failed to quickly fix them, leaving the country without a critical tool at a critical moment. Much of their messaging was also weak and featured walk-backs, reversals, and flat out denials. It was so bad that Dr. Rachel Wallensky, the CDC director, has initiated a review to fix “some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes.”

(4) Expert Opinion Leaders. You might think a fast-moving pandemic would be the kind of situation where experts and talking heads would tread carefully; you would be wrong. Time and again, opinion leaders got out ahead of the science or the policy or the facts and got into trouble. Some like Dr. Anthony Fauci just got too much exposure. It is a rule of public appearance that you cannot get that level of exposure over time without making mistakes. He started to opine on things like shutting down airlines or closing schools that were complex matters beyond the science or medical realm, yet he felt comfortable giving an opinion. He is an expert, but became over-exposed, then responded to off-base critics by increasing his exposure. A pandemic requires understated, calm expertise . . . with an emphasis on understated. In policy matters (and the pandemic in the end was a policy matter), you should never become the story.

(5) Teachers’ Unions. Wait just a minute, put down those rulers and listen to my argument! I am only calling out the unions here. They have always held that public education is not only a right, it is essential to our nation. Then the pandemic hit, and scrambled our education system. After a short while, data became evident that schools weren’t the cause of outbreaks (in general) and could operate safely with social-distancing rules. But the unions dug in, refusing to cooperate and making a series of demands on pay, facilities, and student-teacher ratios among other things, effectively refusing to reopen some schools for two years. It wasn’t that some of their demands weren’t legitimate; they were. It wasn’t that conservatives hadn’t been complaining about the teachers and the curriculum for years; they had. It wasn’t that some students and some teachers would get sick; they did. It was an “in-your-face” refusal despite the science and the parents and even the local governments’ cries to reopen. Nothing would get back to normal without normal schools. Unions stood in the way of that, and it brought about a sustained drop in public school rolls, greater parental activism, and a general disdain. Imagine you’re a trashman who gets told he has to work because he is “essential,” but also gets told to find care for his kids since schools are “unsafe.” All the while, schools in other countries and private schools in America kept running. So much for “essential to our nation.”

(6) Of course, the other related group which lost even more was students. The preliminary data are in, and they’re all bad. Students did not advance during the remote learning phase, and in many cases they regressed. The psychological development of an entire generation was deformed, and little can be done to fix that as it is a delay in development. Teachers at all levels point to increased truancy, inattentiveness, lack of motivation, and loss of social skills. We will be paying for this mistake for decades to come.

(7) Enthusiasts for globalist economics, like those who cheered for sending manufacturing jobs to China or Southeast Asia, or the streamlining (to the extreme) of the supply chains. Among economists, there has always been the understanding that there are some national security issues where you just don’t rely on the market for solutions (one doesn’t hire up a Seal Team on demand). Over time, those exceptions got whittled down to the bare bones: mostly the military hardware you use to kill people and break things. The pandemic was a reminder that even the computer chips we needed were at risk, as was much else. I trust we will reinvigorate domestic or regional agreements which give us greater resilience across the full spectrum of national security (e.g., public health).

(8) Bosses. First they had to deal with shutdowns. Then they had to figure how to manage “work from home.” I contend it was easier to figure out how to “work from home” then it was to manage someone who is “working from home” but I am open to counterarguments. Then they faced resistance to resuming office operations, because who wants to go back to the water cooler when you can be comfy in a dress shirt-and-shorts for your Zoom meeting? Now they are bombarded with demands for raises and more flexible work environments, with seasoned employees quite willing to take their skills out on the market. Some of these trends were already underway, but mostly bosses were resisting them rather than adapting to them (in my opinion). Then they faced a massive transition in a short time. Tough-sledding, but that’s why they get paid the big bucks, right?

(9) I am going out on a limb here and putting China in the losers’ camp. Some may think “wait, I thought they beat this thing early and often.” That is true in that that is what they say, and what they want you to think. It is also what the Chinese government wants its people to think. The problem is, the truth is out there, as they used to say on the X-Files, and the Chinese people know it. They got lied to. People who spoke up are missing. People died from Covid without being accounted for. The pandemic is still recurring in China due to low vaccination rates, poor vaccine efficacy, and low herd immunity. And the Chinese government continues to lockdown entire megacities as its main tactic. Worst of all, China’s leadership crows about their superior performance and how much better their authoritative system did. Which is to say they learned nothing from their many, disastrous mistakes. Meanwhile, the pandemic caused the roaring growth they rely on to placate the masses to falter, the health system failed, they clamped down on their golden goose technology firms (Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, which may not be household names in the West, but rival Apple, Meta, Amazon, etc.) for political control, the overbuilt real estate market remains a tilting house of cards, and they just figured out their population is already decreasing with only an accelerating decline in sight. China’s claimed Covid success is already one of the biggest shams of the 21st Century.

Next up, who are the winners coming out of the pandemic?

First in a four-part series.

The corona virus, and the COVID pandemic it spawned, have rapidly faded from view. There are some government health officials still trying to sound the alarm, as each new variant is much more infectious but seemingly less deadly. The danger of overwhelmed hospitals remains, but as the global herd gains immunity, the danger wanes. We might still have another wave, or a variant of concern; who knows? Eventually the virus will take its place alongside seasonal flu viruses, and one-hundred years from now somebody will write a story about the common corona virus and how it upended your great-grandmother’s life. And so it goes.

Since we now have Covid in the rearview mirror, I want to spend a few posts reviewing, in order, (1) What we learned, (2) Losers, (3) Winners, and (4) What happens next?. Staring with what we learned. Or perhaps I should say what we re-learned. Most of what follows is disturbingly of a piece: read any good history book about pandemics (especially John Barry’s The Great Influenza or Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel) and you will be distressed to learn that humanity (even modern, technologically-advanced society) is always surprised by disease outbreaks, and always learns (and then forgets) the same lessons.

1. Has there ever been a more hackneyed, ill-advised, or useless motto than “Follow the science” ? Spawned in response to skeptics who denied damn-near everything, this phrase responded not with simplicity but with simple-mindedness. Yes, indeed science points a way forward, but it does nothing to answer the philosophical and moral questions which a pandemic poses. Here’s a hypothetical: at any point, the corona virus could have been completely eradicated by a simple two-week, full-on quarantine by all humanity. Nobody leaves their home/apartment for two weeks. No transmission=end of virus. This was what science indicated. Yet tens or hundreds of millions would have died when they had no water, or food, or heat, or medicine, or emergency services or . . . you get the point. What was scientifically obvious was morally opprobious. Science can inform policy, but policy must go beyond science to make difficult choices.
2. Science, especially medical science, takes time. And studies, often the kinds that don’t have proper controls when done in real time. It’s hard to get people to sign up to be in the control group to study how long one can go without treatment for a disease (think about it). Did you know that medical science found some volunteers who signed up for Covid challenge trials? That is, they were confirmed to have not had the virus, but volunteered to have it shot up the nose. Brave souls indeed! In the meantime, medical research looks at a variety of incomplete data and makes SWAGs: scientific wild-assed guesses (a term we used in military intelligence). They do it because they have to, because government officials are asking “what the hell do we do now?” and “wait until . . .” is not an acceptable answer. So you get guidance like “no, masks are not useful” later changed to “yes, masks are essential.” This is not evidence of incompetence, nor or conspiracy, just science and medicine seeking truth, a little at a time. Once upon a time, we put leeches on wounds and cut holes in skulls to let out bad spirits. Later we got so much more advanced and stopped doing such barbaric things. Later still we realized that leeches do stop the bleeding and opening the skull can prevent brain injury from swelling. Science marches on!
3. You will be shocked to learn that during a global pandemic, being an island is an advantage. Also, having authoritarian leaders who will ruthlessly suppress the people is an advantage. And being an out-of-the-way place or one no-one-wants-to-visit is an advantage. Finally, having a society that is high-trust (i.e., people believe the government) or highly compliant (i.e., with strong social norms to act like others) is an advantage. Countries with any of these advantages performed better for a time during the pandemic. Not because they were smarter, or had better policies, or any other reason. All these advantages proved temporary. China delayed its pandemic by more than a year; now they are dealing with regional outbreaks that keep stalling the economy and infuriating a pandemic-weay public. In the end, different is just different, not better.
4. Speaking of China, we will not know how the pandemic started until the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is gone. I am sure you know the competing scientific hypotheses: a natural evolution starting from the wet market in Wuhan, and some kind of leak from the Wuhan virology center (I won’t include the intentional release of a manufactured virus, as there is no evidence for it). You may have seen some recent news releases by various groups claiming they have reviewed the data and proven it was a natural evolution, not a lab leak. They are being economical with the truth. The only available data on what happened during the Wuhan epidemic phase comes from China, and was released over a year after the pandemic phase began. They have released no new data, and prohibit any independent study effort to gather data. Reviewing that data will only confirm what the Chinese government has said all along: naturally-occuring disease. Once the CCP is gone, someone will be able to gather the actual data and piece together what really happened. Remember, we didn’t isolate the virus that caused the Spanish Flu (1918) until the late 1990s.
5. The pandemic revealed social media in all its glory and gore-y. My dear wife and I wanted to get vaccinated. Mexico was only offering a Chinese vaccine: good enough, but who ever said they wanted a medical treatment that was “good enough?” We were willing to fly back to the States, but didn’t want to spend three weeks (minimum) waiting between the first and second doses of the mRNA vaccines. So we wanted the one-shot Jansen (aka Johnson & Johnson) vaccine. But how to find it? I found some vaccine-hunting FaceBook groups, and within hours of landing in Cincinnatti, we had appointments for our shots! Simply amazing, and impossible without social media. On the other hand, social media allowed every crackpot to fill the gap left by the evolving science with hare-brained schemes. Helpful hint: no scientific or medical research has EVER begun with the phrase “I know a friend who takes . . . “. Likewise, it is not legitimate to criticize potential treatments by exaggeration, like those who called Ivermectin a treatment for parasites in horses. Yes, it is that, and it is also used by humans. Nearly all antibiotics used by humans are also used for animals, so perhaps you want to stop using them, too? Being superstitious and unscientific is bad; being ridiculous in response is no better. And social media put all this nonsense on display worldwide, twenty-four hours a day.
6. There is no such thing as a harmless comorbidity. Since modern medicine has made many serious conditions chronic, that is, conditions that you can live with and don’t kill you outright (but are still dangerous), people have started treating them as harmless. AIDS is now something people just take drugs for, and go on living as they had before. Ditto heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and a raft of other conditions. But, when some new pandemic comes around, all these conditions make you far more likely to (1) get sick, (2) be hospitalized, and (3) die. Covid was a wake-up call that medicine’s amazing ability to pull people up just short of the the ledge is just that: they are still on the ledge, and all it takes is a small change in the environment like a new disease to push them over. Don’t think the ledge isn’t there; it is.
7. It is called force majeure for a reason. If the phrase looks oddly familiar, it is because you have read it in every contract you’ve ever signed. It is Latin for Acts of God or literally unforeseen circumstances, and it invalidates the contract and relieves one party of liability. Pandemics are a classic force majeure. All kinds of trips, plans, weddings, sporting events, surgeries and parties got left in the dust. Sometimes people lost money, sometimes they just forever lost an opportunity. Plans are just the basis we make for the changes that will inevitably happen.
8. Efficient supply chains only work in a perfect world. “Just in Time” delivery and concentrating supply providers makes great economic sense when the system as a whole operates normally. Throw a wrench into the system, and it collapses, since there is no slack. No local inventory means no way to respond to surge demand for low demand items (masks). Off-shoring most of your manufacturing to low-cost, high-volume producers in a single region in China works great until they have a lockdown. Maximized trade flows don’t work when all your shipping containers end up empty in the same port. These things were all obvious, but it took a little virus to remind us. Methinks we will accept a little more cost and a little less convenience in order to have a little more resiliency. Or at least me-prays!
9. I have written on this before, but Covid was a great trial run for the end of the antibiotic era. Everybody reading this post grew up in a world where wonder-drugs called antibiotics meant every scratch or trip to the hospital was not a potential visit to the morgue. All of human history was like that until the mid-twentieth century. Now our antibiotics are gradually losing the battle with evolution against the deadly bacteria. Science is fighting back, but it seems we might revert to the distant past at least for a time. Public hygenic acts (masks, avoiding unnecessary physical contact, washing hands frequently) may be the norm in the near future.
10. Finally, politics IS your reality. Some of the craziest things I mentioned above came out because one side or the other only saw things through a political lens. Oddly enough, this often resulted in the other side using a similarly political lens. “China must be the culprit.” “No, China must be totally innocent.” “Masks are necessary.” “No, masks are useless.” “Don’t gather in large groups” versus “unless you’re protesting the right thing.” “children are not at special risk” yet “schools must stay closed.” And on and on. Science, medicine, culture, education, international relations and even interpersonal relations all took a back seat to politics. Politics is supposed to be the art of compromising for a common good. I don’t think that word means what it used to.

Next up, Covid’s biggest losers.