Author: Paul E. Veith (Page 2 of 2)

Unsettled. Anxious. Uncertain. A little bit scared. Disoriented.

That’s a summary of my feelings about the Covid-19 pandemic. But something good – maybe – came out of Covid-19. I cleaned my closet, and my long-threatened blog became a reality because there is no time better to start a blog than a once-a-century global pandemic. I don’t plan to make this a Covid-19 diary chronicling the existential questions I find myself facing every day, like “Should I shower today?” “Did I shower yesterday?” “Is it Tuesday or Wednesday?” “Do I watch Better Call Saul or Homeland tonight?”  “Two episodes or three?” I promise to move this blog to other topics soon, but humor me for now.

For whatever reason, a lyric came into my head the other day as I was thinking about our nation’s engagement with Covid-19. It was part of the soundtrack of my college years: “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.” I did know that the lyric came from a Talking Heads song; what I did not know was the name of the song in which those lyrics appeared: “Life During Wartime.”  It starts:

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons, Packed up and ready to go

Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway, A place where nobody knows

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance, I’m getting used to it now

Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto, I’ve lived all over this town

“Life during wartime,” the talking heads, 1979

Fighting the “Invisible Enemy”

Is this wartime in America? I don’t think so. To be sure, you may have heard politicians on television likening our current situation to war – albeit war against an “invisible enemy.” And politicians are not the only people who have compared pandemic to war – Bill Gates did the same in 2018, when he warned of the need to prepare for a pandemic (you know, the pandemic that no one could have predicted).

At a certain level, I get it. By telling people “we are at war,” leaders might hope to convey the gravity of the present situation. “We are fighting a war” makes for a better soundbite than “We are attempting to mitigate a global health emergency by flattening the curve.”  Strangely, using a familiar word like war might even bring comfort to Americans dealing with an unfamiliar predicament.  Some might think: “We’re in a war? Oh, then we’ll be OK. After all, we have the strong, powerful United States military protecting us.”  And, if I can wear my cynic’s hat for just a second, a politician might even summon war and all the best words about war hoping to benefit from what some have called a “rally ‘round the flag effect.” Politicians live to give the voters candy: and who doesn’t want a strong, powerful ally in a fight? Who doesn’t marvel at the spectacle of a big, gleaming military ship sailing into port promising to provide backup hospital beds – even if gathering to marvel at a ship is exactly the wrong thing to be doing right now?

This Ain’t No War

Like many, I have immersed myself in reading about Covid-19. I am powerless to turn away. Give me my candy:  teach me all about things I knew nothing about until recently, like R-naught, shelter-in-place, asymptomatic transmission, N95 masks, PPE, and social distancing. I devour epidemiological models and articles explaining what it means to “flatten the curve.” Some of what I have read has been helpful – mostly stuff written by experts and those who skillfully explain the work of experts. Other stuff I’ve read … not so much. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I know a heck of a lot more today about pandemics than I did two months ago. Thankfully, I don’t consider myself an expert on war, either. The wars that have been fought during my lifetime are not wars that had a great impact on American life at home the way, say, World War II did on those living in the 1940s.

But from my seat on the couch, I cringe a little whenever I hear our national engagement with Covid-19 compared to war, or when I hear this time compared to war time. This isn’t wartime, and it might be really dangerous to think so.

The differences are plain.  During wars, humans on one team attack humans on another team for the purpose of securing land or resources or a way of life, I suppose. The end goal of a war is submission of one team to the other – surrender.  Wars are fought with bombs, battleships, planes, drones, guns, and tanks – often on some godforsaken far-off battle field in a place we would never think to visit. They typically end with agreements to stop the bloodshed and divide the spoils. During pandemics, viruses attack humans on all teams. While we all can easily visualize enemy soldiers trying to kill our soldiers, it’s not so easy to visualize a virus – or to even understand what a virus is. Try this explanation. Fascinating. What jumps out at me are the numbers. I am a sucker for numbers.

For starters, viruses are easily the most abundant life form on Earth, if you accept the proposition that they’re alive. Try multiplying a billion by a billion, then multiply that by ten trillion, and that (10 to the 31st power) is the mind-numbing estimate of how many individual viral particles are estimated to populate the planet.

see link immediately above

And viruses are described as “very efficient. Viruses travel light, packing only the baggage they absolutely need to hack into a cell, commandeer its molecular machinery, multiply and make an escape.” In short, the “enemy” in a pandemic is way different than an enemy in a war, and viruses don’t much care what team you are on.

During wartime, it’s good to be “strong” and “powerful” and have more planes and boats and guns and stuff to wage an attack on the other team.  Good luck with your planes and boats and guns in dealing with a highly contagious virus. During pandemics, the machinery of war is pretty much useless. Sure, military resources can play a role – the aforementioned hospital ships and the Army Corps of Engineers’ assistance in building temporary hospitals are examples. But for the most part, the weapons of war stand idle when the enemy is a virus.

During wartime, you usually need to confront your enemy to win. We are largely past hand-to-hand combat and it seems much modern warfare aims to keep the warriors off the battlefield. But eventually, to win a war there must be some physical human-to-human confrontation. Beating the coronavirus, as a nation, involves literally the opposite of confrontation. During a pandemic like this one, the only surefire way to defeat the enemy is to take all measure to avoid confronting it. Sure, we might find some pharmaceutical solution – a way to “take the fight to the virus” with medicine. That might help the infected, but the national goal here is to minimize infection.

When history is written about wars, the heroes tend to be the commanders and generals and soldiers – the warriors. That’s not to minimize other contributors during wartime, including the code breakers and medics and mechanics and countless others. But – with a few notable exceptions – the movies are made about the fighters. During a pandemic, the heroes are the caregivers (and those who allow them to do their jobs). The doctors and nurses and paramedics and administrators and medical technicians and lab technicians and janitors … the many, many people who come into direct contact with the sick are the heroes during a pandemic.

During wartime, many of us – to be honest – don’t have much of a direct role to play. Sure, for the general civilian population a wartime effort might involve supporting the troops from afar in many ways – by working for industries at home that provide direct support, buying war bonds, paying taxes, etc. But during a pandemic, every single citizen has a direct role to play – avoid getting and, especially, avoid spreading the virus. This is why social distancing is being encouraged or, in most places, mandated. This is why many of us are working remotely and spending most of our waking hours in sweatpants. Sitting in the same house or apartment, day after day, week after week – it’s not great. But keeping to yourself or your family unit is a 100% surefire way to “beat” the virus – if everyone does it. The old adage of a chain being only as strong as its weakest link applies – and that’s why we get so infuriated at Spring Break revelers and elected officials demonstrate stunning ignorance of the basics. They are weak links.

The Wartime Comparison Is Dangerous

Last Fall, my wife and I stood on the beaches of Normandy where young American men were dropped off into a Nazi shooting gallery.  We stood in the very same concrete bunkers where the triggers were squeezed. During actual wartime, young Americans joined the military in service to their country, got trained up, were sent overseas, loaded on to landing boats, and led to violent deaths on a beach. During the same trip, we visited the American cemetery and its meticulous, staggering sea of white crosses marking 9,388 grave sites over 172 acres.  We also visited small towns and the surrounding countryside where thousands of other young Americans jumped out of airplanes into enemy-occupied France to play their role in winning the war.

Having that experience, it seems incongruous to compare what I am doing – working from home, watching Netflix a lot, eating Klondike bars, and practicing social distancing – with what Americans have done in serving their countries and risking their lives during actual wartime.

But the real danger does not lie in diminishing what the soldiers have done or in pretending like we are doing something heroic. The danger in the wartime analogy is something I alluded to earlier. For most Americans, winning a war is largely the job of others. We are happy to go on with our lives and allow others to be heroes. We will stand and cheer them when they are saluted during sporting events, we’ll vote for politicians who promise to make it a priority to keep our military strong (spoiler alert, every politician makes this promise), and we’ll generally maintain respect for the military as an institution. That’s a small price to pay for the people and the machines that win wars.

Overcoming a pandemic – I use that word because I’m not sure a virus can even be defeated, exactly – is not the job of others. A pandemic does not end until the virus runs its course and stops infecting people. We “win” by reversing exponential growth of the number of infected. Most viruses aren’t a super big deal – they aren’t infectious enough to shut down large swaths of the economy for the sake of saving lives. But this virus is a big deal. I am impressed that most of us – at least in my circles – seem to be taking this really seriously. But I fear what happens when April turns to May, and the weather improves. The pressure to re-start the economy will ramp up steadily. Cabin fever will drive people to leave their homes, to take risks – all of us. Those who lead us – both in the public and private sector – have difficult decisions to make.

Let me wrap up with my old friend: numbers. The focus of the reporting of most models has been on the question of how many Americans will die under various scenarios? The models are all over the place. The “open up the economy” set like some; the “shut it down” folks favor others. The thing about models is that they are, well … models. Predictions based on assumptions; educated guesses, at best. One thing I know is this – our ability to make valid assumptions right now is dubious, at best. We are in uncharted waters. Thankfully, pandemics don’t happen a lot. But the one set of numbers that the federal task force referenced earlier this week in extending the stay-at-home recommendation projected deaths in the range of 100,000 to 240,000. Again, I have no idea – and they have no idea – if 100,000 Americans are going to die after contracting Covid-19. But that’s far from the ugliest estimate, and that’s still a Rose Bowl full of people. And among those who die – among those who already have died – are people who had a lot of life yet to live.

If we get through Covid-19 and only 40,000 or 50,000 or 60,000 die, should be pat ourselves on the back, collectively? Should politicians take a bow?  I think not.  But I know this for sure: the one and only surefire way to make sure that you don’t contribute to that number is to behave as if you have the virus – even if you don’t – and make it your mission not to infect anyone else. You don’t need to be a warrior to do that, you just need to be smart and respectful of others.

If it motivates you to be a good citizen, go ahead and consider this wartime. Wartime with Netflix and Zoom meetings, if you will.  We can agree, at least, with the Talking Heads in this respect: it’s no time for fooling around.