So, I saw this question on the internet, and thought it was worth discussing. Our COVID response, should we have handled it differently? More specifically, should we have shut down the economy.
And uh...yeah. my response is that my strategy wouldn't have been terribly different than what we did, if anything, we should have been MORE strict. The key to stopping a pandemic like this is to stop it EARLY, before it spreads. Trump downplayed it and didnt take the threat seriously and was too concerned about what the virus would do to the economy to properly control its spread. We should have been like Madagascar in Pandemic 2. Shut down everything. The stronger, more decisive action we took at first, the better the response would have been. We could have had a global shut down for like a couple weeks, the virus wouldnt have spread at all, and we would go back to normal. But because we waited until it was out there spreading to take action against it, we were too late.
I don't think shutting down the economy for a year, like we did, was unreasonable. Again, maybe I spent too much time in college playing Pandemic 2, but given how it was basically like super flu and was like 100x more deadly or something, and given how many people died from it, yeah, we weren't unreasonable for trying to control it. I think shutting down was a good decision. At the very least, we flattened the curve where we didn't overstretch our healthcare resources. Remember how we were concerned about exponential spread so fast that it would overwhelm the hospitals? That said, yes, absolutely, we made the right decision.
I'm going to be honest, the economy is not my top priority. I'm a human centered capitalist. Markets exist to serve us, we don't exist to serve them. And while we could make a case for modern capitalism being designed as "slavery with extra steps", I do believe that that's something a little reform can't fix. The republicans want the whole world to revolve around the economy. The economy is the most important thing. Everyone working constantly is the most important thing. Screw grandma, she can die, heck she would be glad to die to save the economy. Yeah, that's literally how the far right thinks.
Heck, i'll double down on this, and this is where I really disagree with the right, and you see a difference in our philosophies. The right saw shutting down the economy as their way of life under attack by the far left. While some of this was delusions of tyranny and transitioning the economy to communism that got them concerned about ANY sort of shut down. But, there was also something else they feared: the loss of work ethic.
For the right, work ethic is the life blood of all societies. They believe if we are not disciplined and work constantly at all times, that capitalism will stop functioning and the country will decay and become weak. They think that if we don't all waste our lives working, that we will all starve come winter.
Now, see where the problem is from me. I actually AM anti work. Most liberals and leftists actually aren't, but I am. And something I personally hoped would happen with COVID is that much like I did when I was shut out of the economy post college/great recession, that people would kind of wake up, and realize that work isn't everything to life, and that it would cause a bit of a revolt against work as an idea.
Now, in some forms this did happen, but the right fought back ferociously, recognizing that this could happen. Their ideology kind of relies on everyone being nice little worker bees who are so brainwashed around work, that they can't see a life without it. If people start getting a bit too comfortable with that pandemic money, they might want a basic income. They might want to have more "work life balance", and we can't let that happen. Work should BE your life, according to them. Now get back to work, you little worker bee.
Of course, as right wingers do, they dressed this up as the guise of "freedom". People should be free TO work. They shouldnt be allowed to not work and be given money for not working. That ruins a person according to them. It ruins their work ethic, which ruins their character and given their entire ethical system isn't based around some sort of utilitarianism or consequentialism but some weirdo form of virtue ethics based on christianity, yeah they can't accept this from happening.
So to save the people and their work ethic, and what makes america "great" according to these people (which is a massive circlejerk about work ethic), they had to force Americans back to work. And the democrats, not wanting to look like evil socialists and basically giving in to these ideas, they ended up rolling over and opening up ASAP.
Honestly, I'm going to be honest, I do have biases here given my attitudes toward work, but work shouldnt be central to peoples' lives. Work is what we do, to do the things we need, to survive or live a good life. But the right seeks work as a good in itself. And they believe in forcing people to work "for their own good", a direct callback to the protestant work ethic.
And honestly, my view on the economy is this: as long as enough people are working to do the essential roles for society, i dont care about work ethic, and whether people work or not. I dont see work as an inherent good. I see work as a necessary evil. Never, at any point during the pandemic, did we push things to a point that peoples' basic needs weren't being met from a work perspective. From a distributional perspective, yeah, but from a work perspective, no. We kept the essential workers working. We laid off 1/3 of the work force, and kept the other 2/3 working doing the jobs Americans NEEDED to be done. And in a lot of ways, this laid bare what I said all along about work. That a lot of work out there doesnt NEED to be done. Don't get me wrong, who doesn't like going to the movies, or amusement parks, or getting a new GPU at a non insane price? But should people be FORCED under the threat of poverty to provide those things? No.
Honestly, 2020 taught me that my ideals actually were right, that the way our society is set up is artificial, it can be changed at any time, and that maybe it should change. I actually preferred the way we lived in 2020 to some extent over the way it is now. It was simpler, and while it was boring for all of the extraverts, let's face it, the nromal ways of life are hell on earth for someone like me, who feels forced to participate in a system that i really dont like.
Really, for all of the talk of freedom, I felt like I had more freedom during covid than i do now in some ways. Sure, I couldnt do some things that could spread the disease, but I didnt really care much anyway. I missed out on only a handful of things. And in return, a got the freedom to not be forced to work as a slave in the economy to some extent.
Really, what's NOT to like about that?
Now, ideally, my actual ideal world is one in which we can all do what we want, extraverts can work and go to amusement parks, I can screw off and do my own thing, and everyone is happy. Again, it's Van Parijs' "lazies vs crazies" debate. The second the crazies lifestyle came under assault even a little, out of necessity, they screamed tyranny and blah blah blah. But as a "lazy", I actually kinda liked 2020, minus the disease part. I mean, I always seem to like it when the normal way of life is suspended. I loved snow days as a kid for example. Normal living in our society isn't living at all in my opinion, and I hate this system. Nothing makes me feel less burdened more than being told "nah, stay home today, go back to bed, don't get up early". COVID was actually an interesting time where we could practice how to move toward a less work centric society. We figured out new ways to teach kids, and new ways to do work remotely, and new ways to automate stuff away. And these were good things. And I think that to some extent, many of those changes were actually positive.
But, conservatives wanna conserve the traditional way of life in all of its glory. They screamed tyranny, they called for giving people the "freedom" to work, and they refused any and all ways to mitigate the virus. Which really pisses me off. Even though I have these idealistic anti work views, I'm not even the tyrant the right thinks I am, I wouldnt shut down the economy to force my ways on people, rather it was shut down because HEY THERE IS THIS DANGEROUS DISEASE GOING AROUND, and the right was so rigid they wouldn't even try to mask up, or get the vaccine. And that's freaking sickening. I mean, even if you are a pro work traditionalist, why wouldnt you get the vaccine? Why wouldnt you wear a mask? Again, they just have this irrational, ignorant anti authority bias where they dont like to be told what to do at all, even if it's to save lives, and see any attempts to change their behavior, even if it's to live life as they want to, as tyranny. It's dumb. So dumb. Do they not realize they made things worse?
THis is one of the reason lock downs were so ineffective. Because despite the federal lockdowns, the states were trying to open up everything all throughout the pandemic, causing the virus to spread like wildfire. Then they point to the virus spreading like wildfire and are like "see, those shut downs did nothing". YES BECAUSE YOU UNDERMINED THEM AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS YOU IGNORANT PERSON.
So no, I dont regret what we did, if anything I resent the far right for undermining everything we did.
And as for the economy reopening. I admit, yes, shutting down an entire global economy and then reopening overnight was a bad idea. Everything with our economy is profits profits profits and productivity, productivity, productivity. And I do think we opened too fast. It's like the second the vaccine became available, we just reopened everything overnight. And that caused such a shock to the economy it created an inflationary spiral, because there was suddenly too much demand and too many jobs, and not enough raw resources for the economy to sustain itself, where the end result was an inflationary spiral. What happens when you have tons of people suddenly want to spend money on limited resources that arent there due to cut down pandemic supply chains, excessive demand,a nd everyone reopening the economy at once and not being able to fill the jobs for a variety of reasons. Quite frankly, we should have opened the economy slowly over 2021, rather than just removing all of the restrictions in april and letting things all where they may. If we opened it in stages, yes, people would have groaned and complained, but we wouldn't have had the crapshow that followed. And yeah, I know im pointing to supply chain issues and worker shortages (aka jobs surplus as I call it), rather than corporate greed, but that came later. The fact was, as soon as the economy turned into a free for all where inflation was rising, a lot of corporations just used the moment to be like...uh...we need to raise prices...because we can't find workers...and supply chain stuff...yeah. Oh wait, where did all of these profits come from? Yeah, corporations abused the crisis, the crisis had legit causes from reopening the economy, but then companies used it as an excuse just to make inflation significantly worse by using it as cover for raising prices as much as they can get away with. I think at this point we're FINALLY starting to see pushback as demand falls and suddenly, it turns out those prices are too high and no one can afford anything, but yeah. All of the crap that happened was because we reopened TOO FAST. Again, a slower, more planned out reopening that happened in gradual phases as people got the vaccine would have been better. But, again, the right screamed like a little word I don't wanna say on here, and then the left just...gave in to them.
Again, I strongly believe the core problem with our pandemic response was the right kept sabotaging it at every turn over their concerns about "tyranny" and the economy, and the left just giving in on the matter. Seriously, the right just sabotages everything the left does, then screams that government doesnt work, and everyone votes for the right. And then the left rolls over, and the right wins the moral argument, and the overton window keeps moving to the right. And now people are like gee, do you think we should have done things differently? Heck no, we should've doubled down instead of letting the right sabotage everything we wanted to do.
And I do wanna discuss some of the culture wars that came after the economy reopened. Work from home. A lot of workers liked it. A lot of businesses didnt. They are forcing people to stop it and come in any way, all while rubbing it in their faces they can no longer work in sweat pants and have to dress up and blah blah blah. It's like the right loves to pride itself on hating good things and being for bad things. Again, it's because their entire moral compass is distorted. Again, to them, morality is about virtue and being a "good person" and "good people" are disciplined and have work ethic. WHile there is some "functionalist" basis to this, it's vastly overstated, and their crocodile tears about how every change ever is bad because it might mess with the normal functioning of society is vastly overstated. And to some extent, we live a lesser existence because of this. These guys dont actually understand how the world works, how the world can get by just fine without their ideas (to some extent, I'm not an EXTREMIST, mind you), and fight every minor change as if it will cause the downfall of society. Because in their minds it is.
And as we went back to "normal", we gaslight people for not following their model of society. Instead of calling the jobs surplus for what it is (because that IS what it is, normally the economy is structured to ensure there are more workers than jobs, and when we create a shock to the economy suddenly there are more jobs than workers), we claim it's a worker shortage and go on about how "no one wants to work any more", trying to bully and gaslight people. Like for as much as they were screaming about how not being able to work is tyranny during covid, they sure love shaming people for not being forced to take whatever job they can get regardless of working conditons and pay, and completely disregarding their alleged freedom in the economy. Funny how that works. Seriously, while I can be somewhat sympathetic, in more normal times, that forcing people to not work is a bad thing, so is forcing people to work. We're not respecting peoples' freedom post covid to say no. Instead, people are trying to force others to work to provide luxuries that they dont really NEED, while simultaneously removing worker protections like self isolating during covid. So now workers have no choice but to go to work sick and spread covid to their coworkers. Lovely. But that's the world the right wants. The economy doesnt work for you, you work for it, and you better get back to working even if you're exposed to this potentially deadly virus that still exists and we like to just forget about.
And now they're trying to stop the free covid vaccines and go to a normal paid model, which I think Bernie stopped to some extent but yeah, that was a thing, and that is sickening too. We had one taste of single payer healthcare in this country with these covid vaccines, and now they're taking it away.
Seriously, the right fought this as a cultural revolution, and they're winning, and the left is just rolling over left and right. This crisis could have been a time for us to come together, realize that we don't need to keep living this way, and change our economy to be more centric to our actual needs. Instead, the right recognized the threat of this, and wanting to force their stupid little ideas of virtue on people and wanting to stop people from making those realizations, forced the country to reopen everything prematurely, none of our policies were anywhere near as effective as they should have been, and the left just rolled over and let them score the big cultural win.
I really hate this country sometimes. Again, the big problem is we have a crazed right that will fight like hell to get their way, and a left that just...rolls over and gives it to them. And as a result, left wing ideas look very unattractive to the populace, while everyone argues that the right had it right all along. Idiots.
But no, as you can tell, I haven't really changed my views at all. The left just got outplayed and we caved to the petulant children and let them get their way, as usual.
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