The Virus Will Win – The Atlantic

Although we do not yet know the effect of more recent events on the course of the pandemic, or what exactly will happen in the coming weeks and months, the list of culprits will likely be even longer than that.

If the virus wins, it may also be because Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyds neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds as Floyd was pleading for his life, setting off protests thatas righteous as they arecould well result in mass infections.

If the virus wins, it may also be because 1,200 public-health experts obfuscated the mortal risk that these mass protests would pose to the most vulnerable among us by declaring not only (as would be reasonable) that they supported them as citizens, but also (which is highly implausible) that they had determined, as scientists, that they would actively serve the national public health.

If the virus wins, it may also be because so many states moved to reopen before getting the pace of infections under control.

If the virus wins, it may also be because the right-wing-media echo chamber is starting to downplay the risk that a second wave poses to Americans.

If the virus does win, then, it is because American elites, experts, and institutions have fallen shortand continue to fall shortof the grave responsibility with which they are entrusted in ways too innumerable to list.

About a month ago, I started to write a very different article. Is it possible, I wondered, that with the benefit of hindsight, this cruel period will seem rather more heroic than is obvious to its contemporaries? One thing is clear: If we had let the virus rip through the population unchecked, the consequences would have been unspeakable. But ifa big ifwe manage to contain the pandemic, and avert millions of deaths, it would constitute one of the greatest achievements in human history.

Hoping to publish the article in The Atlantic, I kept waiting for the situation in the United States to recover sufficiently to justify my guarded optimism. But that moment never arrived. Now it feels more remote than ever.

Read: Americas patchwork pandemic is fraying even further

We were on the brink of doing something incredible. And much of the credit for that would have gone to the many ordinary citizens who lived up to their moral responsibility in an extraordinary moment.

Scientists have desperately searched for a vaccine. Despite the real risks to their health, doctors, nurses, cooks, cleaners, and clerical staff have reported for duty in their hospitals. Suddenly declared essential, workers who have long enjoyed little respect and low wages helped to keep society afloat.

For the rest of us, the order of the day was simply to stay at home and slow the spread. It was a modest task, which made it all the more galling that some people fell short. But this nitpick obscures how many people did do what they could to get us all through the crisis: They checked in with their relatives and cooked for the elderly. They took to their balconies to thank health-care workers or sang songs to cheer up the neighbors. By and large, they stayed at home and slowed the spread.

Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give upand tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths.

Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.

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The Virus Will Win - The Atlantic