They'll Never Learn

We can learn a great deal from our recent horrifying experience with a global pandemic, but we won’t.  If history is any judge, when the major SARS-CoV-2 infection rate and crisis wanes, so will our interest in preventing another pandemic from getting out of control.  We should have learned valuable lessons from the 1919 influenza pandemic, but that information faded with time.  Likewise, our responses to Smallpox, Yellow fever, Cholera, Scarlet fever, Diptheria, Polio, H2N2, Measles, Crypto, 2009 H1N1(swine flu), Whooping cough, HIV, and Ebola, should have prepared us better for Covid-19.

Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 Hospital Ward

Like even our major financial crises, we tend to marginalize our experiences once things improve.  The Great Depression, the energy crisis of the 2000s, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, the housing bubble of 2003, and the Covid-19 recession are, even now, minor annoyances.

From the pandemic experience throughout 2020 and 2021, we have been provided with a great deal of information.  Science worked miracles and had vaccine candidates in trials within weeks of being provided with the genetic sequence of the virus.  Vaccine testing and approval were put on the fast track.  All good things.  Now, seven months since we have had working vaccines, we are seeing a surge in infections due to a viral variant and vaccine hesitancy.  The vaccines work against the new variant, but people aren’t getting vaccinated, at least in sufficient numbers.

Why is this happening?  What could we have done better?  What can we learn in the future?  Answering the first question is easy, people don’t trust the government, so they don’t trust the vaccine.  What could we have done better?  Also, easy to answer but difficult to implement.  Many people in the rural south and other rural areas have a poorly functioning or non-existent medical system.  Our medical business model is just that, a business where profit is paramount.  There is little money to be made in rural communities, so these people rely on clinics and substandard healthcare.  Many just turn to their religious leaders and prayer.

What if we had provided a healthcare system that serviced all our citizens, regardless of profit?  Perhaps these people would have a place of trust to turn to and wouldn’t have to rely on rumors, misinformation, social media, and word of mouth.  Build up a level of trust by treating everyday medical problems.  That way, when a pandemic strikes in the future, people in these underserved communities would have someone they could turn to for good medical advice.  More people would get vaccinated, and we would all benefit from earlier herd immunity.

Will this happen?  Doubtful.  We are a nation of the here and now.  We look for financial rewards that provide gratification today, not at some point in the future.  We will have other “fish to fry” once this pandemic is on the mend.  We spent billions, perhaps trillions of dollars solving this problem and have paid dearly for the lessons that should have been learned.

As Scotty Beckett said in For Pete’s Sake, Little Rascals 1934, “They’ll never learn.”