Failures Addressing the Pandemic

It's still early in the covid19 epidemic sweeping the world, but the US appears to have failed in its response. "The system was blinking red" according to an anonymous source in the federal government speaking to the Washington Post , in a clear allusion to the 9/11 commission report on intelligence failures leading up to that terrorist attack. Foreign Policy follows up by asserting that this was a bigger intelligence failure than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, primarily because the evidence of danger was so clear, but still ignored.

The US also had a clear playbook to follow, one that other countries have followed to the letter. Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore all implemented testing, quarantines, contact tracing, and public information campaigns. There is a high degree of compliance among citizens, and almost everyone appears to be wearing masks and gloves and rigorously disinfecting public spaces and checking the public for fevers. Taiwan, despite hundreds of thousands of people traveling back and forth to China, has kept the confirmed case count to only 252 as of March 26th. The US had a similar playbook handed down to the current administration, but high turnover and a culture of fear among subordinates and health experts led to the problem being ignored until it blew up out of control.

There is another reason that the US failed the initial response to SARS-COV-2: the virus is invisible at first. Potentially half of carriers have mild or no symptoms, and there's a lengthy incubation period and early flu-like symptoms before it develops into life-threatening pneumonia. Taken together, it means that exponential growth can progress silently for weeks before the unfolding public health crisis becomes apparent. There is no hope of containing this virus without an extremely aggressive public health campaign. This means testing hundreds of thousands of people, maintaining a public health bureaucracy to track cases and enforce quarantine, and a huge public outreach and education campaign. This is not possible without political will.

The US, to put it mildly, has not done this. The country was already coming apart at the seams, burning in the flames of an interminable culture war stoked by political consultants for electoral gain. In this environment, one side believed it was advantageous to dismiss the virus as a hoax designed to hurt the president and the American economy. The consequences are now unfolding daily, but it's still unclear if the political factions in the US will sign an armistice, or if political polarization will prevail.

Climate Change

The parallels with climate change are obvious. Climate change is an invisible, slow-moving threat, until some undefined time in the future when it will blow up in our faces. The world is beginning to regularly observe the effects of climate change, but its manifestation is unequal and confusing, making it easy to dismiss as natural variation. The United States can put off any response by assuring ourselves that China will never buy in, and any unilateral action will unfairly burden our economy. The clear and present danger is even murkier than SARS-COV-2, requiring non-experts to make an epistemological argument about which media outlets and scientific organizations to trust. There is an even more concentrated financial interest on the side of doing nothing about climate change. These financial interests have successfully made climate change another front in the culture war, making the issue too politically toxic for most mainstream politicians to touch.

The prognosis is not good. Just as with COVID-19, the playbook is clear, but not easy. So far, the lackluster response to the virus looks eerily similar to the lackluster response to climate change. Blame other countries, deny the problem exists, claim the cure is worse than the disease, and turn a scientific argument into an epistemological one, all to delay any meaningful action for political gain.

It is up to voters to decide if this is an acceptable reality. One benefit of having an immediate problem like a viral pandemic is to remind America that we can still engage in large collective action if the political will is there. Most of America is currently on lockdown, and the US government finally agreed on a massive $2 trillion stimulus package. A similar sense of urgency could be brought to bear on climate change now that American voters realize this kind of government action is possible and can improve their lives. It is up to all Americans to demand competence and rationality from the government, and this pandemic may be the best wake up call possible.