The Most Important Lesson Of The Pandemic Is That I Was Right About Everything

Just like every other crisis ever.

We’re two years into a global pandemic that’s done an incredible amount of damage, both physical and psychological. The scale of the disruption it’s caused is pretty much unmatched in living memory, though there are still arguments to be had about how to compare it to epidemics of the more distant past.

Given that scale, and the fact that we’re living in a golden age of hyperbole, we’ve seen an awful lot of pixels spilled on how This Changes Everything, and The World Will Never Be The Same and all that. That’s pretty much inevitable, even with crises that are more localized and minor than the ongoing pandemic. It’s probably about equally inevitable that most of these can be summarized by the headline I put up at the top of this. Whatever the author’s background may be, the dramatic change they expect to come from the pandemic is that everybody else in the world will suddenly coalesce behind all of the author’s pre-pandemic policy positions.

I’ve read more of these pieces than is probably healthy, and basically all of them are just doubling down on the pet causes the author has always been pushing. Some of these make a fair amount of sense: people on the public-health beat want more money and power for public health authorities, medical researchers want more basic-research grants, doctors and hospital officials want there to be more money for hiring doctors, etc.. Others are kind of a stretch: climate activists say this demonstrates the need for the Green New Deal, diversity trainers say this calls for more resources directed to DEI programs, cryptocurrency shills say this proves that only [Noun]Coin can work as a hedge against the coming collapse of the world economy.

I would roll my eyes less at the “Everything Has Changed” pieces if I saw more of them where the author’s position had changed. I’d love to see some libertarian-leaning folks saying “You know what, I guess we do need a robust public health infrastructure funded by the state.” Show me a notable YIMBY saying “You know what, packing people into a handful of hot cities is just stacking cordwood for respiratory viruses to burn through, we should spread out out a bit more.” I’d be blown away by a piece singing the praises of remote school by someone who wasn’t shilling for online education in 2019.

The mere lack of change doesn’t necessarily mean any particular one of these positions is wrong, of course— I’m very much on board with the people saying the last two years prove the need for greater investment in public health and medical research, and massive reforms of the way hospitals and nursing homes are run. But, of course, I was on board with those things before the pandemic, too. So, I would agree with them, wouldn’t I?

The point is, they can’t all be right that “the most important lesson of Covid-19” just happens to elevate the importance of their personal hobbyhorses. I mean, I guess you can start narrowing the audience for the lesson, like Amazon touting every book as a bestseller in some absurdly specific category. “The most important lesson for deans and department chairs at liberal arts colleges with a US News ranking in the top 50 is that there should be release time and travel funds to support faculty research on the tourist industry of tropical islands,” or whatever. At some point, though, we’ve kind of lost the plot.

This is largely a problem with framing created by lazy and cynical writers and editors, who never miss an opportunity to latch onto a new crisis as a way to push old ideas. You see a little of the same dynamic around the voting bills that are destined to die in the Senate: people claiming that the shitshow following the 2020 election proves the urgent need to pass bills that would do approximately nothing to rein in the particular tactics that were employed that winter. And of course there are no end of examples of economists taking any and all news as proof of the need for their preferred policy. “Market going down? Cut taxes! Market going up? Cut taxes! Markets essentially unchanged? Cut taxes!”

But, really, in the absence of actual changes of position driven by recent events (which I think are genuinely pretty few), I would settle for idea-mongers writing with just a little more of a sense of perspective.

---

So, there’s some “Old Man Yells at Cloud” content for you, to round out the week. Here are some buttons in case you enjoy that:

And if you have pointers to pieces by people who drew lessons from the pandemic that led them to change their pre-existing positions, I really would like to see them in the comments.