Pandemic pessimism

Eighteen months into this pandemic, my colleagues and acquaintances have unexplainably made a habit of using the “What have you learned about yourself?” as the fun icebreaker question to ask during virtual meetings or social gatherings where we haven’t seen each other in a while. In the times that I go first, I say something along the lines of how I’ve learned that this pandemic has proven humanity’s inability to work together. Even before we had the vaccine, we could’ve saved thousands of lives by simply following social distancing protocols. We didn’t. When the vaccine came, we could’ve ended the pandemic swiftly if everyone just got their shots. Of course, we didn’t. America turned it into a political issue and one of rights and freedom instead of what it actually is — one of public health and safety.

I then go on a long rant about how we spectacularly failed at our naive early-pandemic ambitions of “flattening the curve” and just let the cases pile on by rampantly spreading misinformation and not taking it seriously. And I then end my soap box speech by ending on a dire note about how this has proven that we won’t be able to solve climate change because there is no way to vaccinate our way out of that problem. We absolutely must work on it now together, or the entire Earth suffers. And then the next person to share what they learned in the pandemic talks about the sourdough they baked, the person after shares a fun anecdote about their new fitness routine, and it goes down the line with mentions of at-home hobbies, automotive detailing, adopting puppies, and so on. All while I’m left staring into the void wondering if I’m an overly pessimistic person who can’t seem to see the positive side of things.

But for real, it makes no sense to me. We’re in August 2021 and seeing hospitalizations and cases drastically rise due to the delta variant in the unvaccinated, which in turn puts the vaccinated at-risk due to rapidly mutating variants. The mixed messaging from the CDC about mask mandates doesn’t help. One day, Biden says if you’re vaccinated, you can do “whatever you want”, and the next, we’ve go Dr. Fauci saying we should continue wearing masks until we hit that 70% herd immunity target nationwide. I understand that it’s a fluid and evolving situation that warrants changing guidelines, but then why not err on the side of caution at all times? Why are travel restrictions lifted so suddenly without any kind of vaccination requirements? Why is there no global committee ensuring that people stay alive (like the WHO, but with actual power to enforce things)?

Of course, everyone’s afraid to mandate vaccine passports in America, so small businesses are left to their own whims on how to ensure that everyone is vaccinated. Some follow it, others ignore it, and many have just given up on it entirely. The mixed messaging between state, local, and federal governments does nothing to build confidence in small business owners that this is going to come under control anytime soon. It also boggles my mind that the CDC — an organization whose main purpose is to control the spread of diseases — is capable of so many confusing media blasts and interviews where it’s not clear at all what people should be doing. For how much America prides itself on its unique exceptionalism, it sure knows how to dramatically fall off the stage when asked to display said exceptionalism.

Most companies have pushed back return-to-office dates to early 2022 at this point, with many still adamantly and foolishly clinging onto a fall 2021 reopening as if they were the dog in the “This is fine” meme with the world burning around them. School re-opening plans are all over the place, with most decisions being left to local school boards whose priorities across the U.S. are about as scattershot as a broken shotgun. On top of all this, kids under twelve still remain unvaccinated (which is a shockingly good yet not talked about enough argument to continue wearing masks even if you’re vaccinated). How are parents supposed to plan for school re-opening and returning to work when there’s so much uncertainty around everything? The White House seems to be trying to get the message across and speed up vaccinations, but everything from stimulus packages to halting evictions dies in the dysfunctional Congress under the umbrella of “let the states decide what’s best for its people,” an argument that has never worked for any issue affecting the entire world.

2021 was supposed to be the year that everyone got the vaccines and life returned to “normal”, but playing these games of “getting the vaccine is a personal choice” does nothing but set us all back. Unless you’re actually immunocompromised, just get the shot. Mandate it and require it. Every single person who goes through the clustertruck that is the U.S. immigration process has to prove vaccine records going back to their time of birth. They must obtain this proof contacting healthcare providers in countries where they don’t even keep great records. All this is needed so that the government can ensure that you’re not bringing any deadly diseases with you when you come to the fabled land, you know, on the slight off-chance that you’re a bioweapon tasked with infecting their population. And yet, everyone who was born in the country can self-compromise their own neighbors by “choosing” not to get a vaccine. All the ads going on right now literally begging the unvaccinated to get the shot hits different when you’ve had to prove to the country that you’re not a health risk to bring into the country.

American privilege is also on full display for the world to see. While Brazil, India, and other countries try to contain the continued outbreak and spread of the virus, a not-so-insignificant portion of Americans are on a comment war in the threads of the Facebook post they saw from Karen questioning the efficacy of the virus because it was “made too fast.” The colossal failure of the American education system has been exposed, guts and liver lying on the floor in all their disgusting glory. It has been a problem for a long time, and it has been really easy to ignore for a long time. That is, until the perfect storm of easily-duped minds collides with a firehose of misinformation on social media with poor content validation systems. It boggles the mind to look at some Rick Martin from a Texas ranch question the government’s decision to protect public health and proudly declare that he’s not going to get the vaccine. It breaks the mind even further, then, to look at the same Rick Martin on an ICU bed after having contracted COVID and still proudly declare that he wouldn’t get the vaccine because he doesn’t want the government to “shove it down his throat.”

The biggest failure here is education. Improper training of how to be skeptical of misinformation in school can likely be traced as one of the direct causes of the crisis we’re on. Anyone, literally anyone can post lies online. And anyone who grew up on phpBB forums will tell you how to spot one. Just because the means of transmission are different now (video and images more than text) doesn’t mean the tactics have changed. Attention-seeking folks will spread lies whether virtually or in real life. The difference when doing it virtually is that an unknown algorithm rapidly amplifies reach via strictly defined engagement metrics like watch time and likeness matching. And that is the second-biggest failure, where our government’s inability to regulate the drastic pace at which social media grew in the past two decades is having direct consequences right now.

I often do wonder if my pessimism is driven by the fact that I tend to observe and notice a lot of things for extended periods of time (an arguably “fun” side effect of being a designer). The more I look, the more it makes me think. And the more it makes me think, the more pessimistic I get. How, then, can I remain optimistic for the future where a climate crisis looms? If humanity can’t come together to just perform the most basic act of keeping each other alive, how will we stop our infinite raiding of Earth’s fossil fuels? All our economic models and projections of the future are based on infinite unchecked capitalist growth. Stocks drop when regulations hit, and then rise when companies cut corners by underpaying workers to rake in profits. Entire portfolios of housing markets and retirement plans are built on these unbelievably unsustainable models.

At the end of the day, I guess what I’ve learned in the pandemic is that you can’t take anything for granted. A lot of has changed in my personal life in the past eighteen months. I experienced the beginning of the pandemic in Boston, the middle of it in San Francisco, and the end(?) of it in Portland, OR. When I got vaccinated earlier this year, I just remember feeling relief. Relief that I’m far, far less likely to catch this thing that’s been ravaging the world for a year now that I had both shots. Relief that this will soon end, our bungled attempts of social distancing and flattening the curve would be forgotten, America would insidiously pat itself on the back for a “job well done,” and we would start working towards normalcy again. And yet here we are. Botched and on the brink of being sent back to square one by our lowest common denominator.

I don’t really have much hope for the future and for the next pandemic, and many see that as a quirky personality trait of mine, like I’m one of those the glass-half-empty introverts always worrying about the future. But I’m still able to function effectively in today’s hyper-capitalist and society despite it (even though I still think it’s headed towards a surefire dystopia). I’m actually shocked on the days where I don’t collapse in exhaustion of the world, akin to the characters in Asimov’s Nightfall aghast at the number of stars in the universe. For now, I’ll have to trot on with this odd ability to hold strictly opposing beliefs in my mind at the same time — one of great disdain and pessimism about the future and the other of sheer excitement and joy of the little things in life that give me some sense of peace and comfort like my partner, my puppy, coffee, design, and video games.