The MST Reader is a series of overviews of interesting and timely topics that affect our world.
The MST Reader: Navigating the Pandemic World
Don’t just weather the storm. Build a storm-ship.
We are hurtling through the second month of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Estimates for a vaccine continue to place that a year or 18 months away; the discovery of an effective treatment for symptoms is even harder to estimate. Short of sudden, near-miraculous advances, we are only at the beginning of a long process.
We are on track for unemployment rates that will rival or exceed those seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Those historic rates took years to achieve, however, while the COVID-19 unemployment phenomenon has occurred over the course of only weeks.
There is a lot of discussion currently about re-opening the economy, but no coherent national roadmap for doing so. Social distancing has slowed infection rates, and we can hope that will translate into slowing death rates, also. However, without a comprehensive nationwide test-and-trace system to identify and control individual infections, any lessening of social distancing standards may simply cause infection rates to increase again.
It looks we will probably see a complicated dance of varying regional experimentation, loosening distancing standards and then tightening them again while trying different approaches to testing and contact tracing.
The health crisis may not be over until either the virus works its way through the entire population, or a vaccine or treatment is developed. The economic and social effects will likely follow that trajectory, but also linger long after.
All of this is worth looking at not to be discouraging, but to take a clear-eyed look at the landscape, in order to best decide how to navigate it.
We tell ourselves stories — we believe in progress. The economy grows; a business grows; when that is interrupted, we think of that as temporary, not part of the main story, and we wait for things to go back to the story we like. When it takes too long for our story to resume, we get frustrated.
It will be healthier for us to think of this time not as an interruption, but as a change. We are never going back — not entirely. The story will never go back to the main storyline; this is the storyline now. The interruption will be long, and the path back will be slow, and then we’ll just realize we’re in a new place anyway, not the place we thought we were heading before this all started.
And that’s how the world has always been, though we sometimes try to convince ourselves otherwise. And we are still us.
It’s a time to think about what matters most to us. Many will conclude that family, friends and community are more important than ever, but whatever you decide to focus on, do it with passion.
Keep your eyes open for opportunities to do the right thing.
Don’t just weather the storm. Build a storm-ship, and get sailing.
This is a beginning. It’s up to us to do our best with it. Look forward, look up — the new story will be as great as we have the vision and will to make it.
