5 Points on the Pandemic

I’m going to share 5 big-picture points regarding the pandemic. I share these points NOT because I think they are especially insightful (unlike most of you, I’m not an epidemiologist!), but because I think my future self (with 20/20 hindsight, of course) will be interested to know my 2020 thinking (thanks Facebook memories!).

POINT #1

Life is fragile. Of course, we knew this already (I told you these points wouldn’t be especially insightful!). On the other hand, we have tried REALLY hard to avoid facing the fact that life is fragile. In the modern world, we’ve been socially distancing ourselves from death for decades, but 2020 has forced us to take the blinders off. The media’s obsession with Covid-19 death tolls is maddening mostly for the inconsistency of its sounding of the alarm. About 60,000 people die every week in the United States. The pandemic certainly did produce an excess of deaths. This virus was and is real. But we’ve been infected with a deadly disease all along insofar as we are mortal. The fact of our fragility should, in my opinion, cause us to urgently ask the big questions about life, death, and the possibility of life after death. One of the tragedies of our times is our willingness to live our lives without asking those questions.

POINT #2

Our immune systems are amazing! What if I told you that there existed, way back in March, a universally free survival kit for covid that was about 98% effective? That’s exactly what we’ve got! For those under 60 years old, the case fatality rate for this viral infection is less than 1%. The ‘infection’ fatality rate is even lower. How is this possible without a vaccine? Well, the answer is, of course, that our bodies already have built-in systems to fight off stuff like this. Perhaps a majority of people infected with this virus haven’t even realized it! The pandemic has given us the opportunity to learn more about our innate (I’d say God-given) ability to fight off disease and what we’ve learned has been astounding. Sometimes we lose our sense of wonder at the fact that we can be significantly wounded, and yet, within weeks, the evidence is sometimes gone without treatment. This sort of self-healing happens internally all the time. We take it for granted. We shouldn’t.

POINT #3

Numbers can be manipulated and used to manipulate. There have been plenty of different opinions about covid-19. At one end of the spectrum we’ve had people saying the whole thing is a hoax. At the other end of the spectrum we’ve had people predicting incredible death totals which proved to be more panic-provoking than prophetic. But here’s the thing: Both ends of the spectrum had numbers to back up their claims. Numbers were EVERYWHERE and they all looked neat and tidy (and they were all declared to be ‘the science’). One thing we should be learning through this pandemic is the importance of understanding CONTEXT for the numbers we’re being shown. Too often we’ve allowed narratives to be driven by a small number of people choosing which numbers to show us and when. They place the arrow where they want it, draw a bullseye around it, and then draw our attention. I strongly recommend that everyone figure out a few key data points to pay attention to, and then pay attention to it no matter what the politicians and/or media choose to focus on during a given news cycle.

POINT #4

A virus is going to do what a virus is going to do. With this point, I don’t mean to come across as if I’m saying that there’s absolutely nothing we can do in response to a global pandemic. But I also think we have severely over-estimated our ability to stop a virus (at least a virus like this one). I’ve spent hours and hours looking at charts and statistics. Country by country. State by state. Each entity having its own set of mitigation procedures. Some locked down. Some stayed open. Some mandated masks. Some didn’t. You know what? I simply haven’t seen a ton of difference. The viral waves rise and fall despite our defenses. The bottom line is, we’re in the ocean of this virus and we’re all going to get wet. Some of us will get knocked off our feet for a while. Some of us will drown. It’s the nature of this beast. It might feel better to blame someone or something, but almost certainly that someone or that something couldn’t have stopped the virus from doing what this virus was going to do.

POINT #5  

Flowing directly from my previous point, I’ll share one more. We’re addicted to something that we can’t possibly possess. And that is CONTROL. Since we can’t actually possess it, we’re just addicted to the feeling of being in control. This is true of governors who insist that their policies slowed the spread of the virus (and then blame increasing spread on the failure of the people to abide by their policies). This is also true of the conspiracy theorists who insist that you have to follow their connecting-of-the-dots to truly understand (and take back control) of what’s going on. Here’s the thing: We are NOT in control. This world is full of surprises and many of them are bigger than our ability to manage them. Lacking control, we need to learn to adapt. We must be flexible. We must grieve our losses. We also must celebrate our victories. Our lives should not consist of an endless pursuit of control, but an endless pursuit of love amidst the chaos. In other words, we are better off praying the serenity prayer than grasping at the wind.