Not the first time: Here is how to deal with the Covid Pandemic

As the covid-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the globe bringing fear, illness and death to every country, it is important to understand that, notwithstanding mankind’s desire to control the environment and continue population growth, progress, and prosperity, pandemics and new infectious diseases have been a constant in human history. It is nice to believe that we can use modern medicine and technology to prevent such disasters, but the natural order reminds us that we are not always in control. The current situation enveloping the world is just the latest reminder that humans are one part of a much larger web of life on Earth. If we want to continue the march of our civilization, we will have to marshal our resources and use the intelligence that has brought us this far.

Plagues and epidemics predate human history, and periodically swept through early civilizations in antiquity. Plague swept through the Roman Empire in the centuries before Christ, and in the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed between one third and one half of the populations of Europe and Asia. The arrival of the Spanish, English, and French to the New World in the middle of the last millennium brought smallpox and other diseases that wiped out tens of millions of Native Americans. And in modern times, students of history know that the Spanish Flu killed tens of millions, including young adults, in a pandemic just one hundred years ago.  In spite of its name, that flu began first in western Kansas.

While most people show a respectful amount of fear for this new disease and want to protect the health and lives of themselves and their loved ones, and want to help their neighbors and communities, it is also human nature for some to go into denial and pretend the scourge will simply go away.  Some turn fear into anger, railing against the disruption and change that has arrived; witness the political protests that erupted in state capitals recently.  A far better response would be to learn the facts, understand the new reality, follow the advice of experts, and prepare for change.  Things will not totally be going back to the way they were.    

The HIV/AIDS pandemic was a much slower moving disaster that began to unfold in 1981.  It was marked by fear, anger and denial.  It too is believed to have been a virus that jumped from animal to human.  Because it initially infected disparate and marginal groups, societies ignored it for the first several years.  President Reagan famously never uttered its name until 1985 when his friend Rock Hudson was stricken.  Stigma and prejudice surrounded those at risk. The HIV pandemic changed lives, including my own. After losing dozens of friends in Ohio and Michigan, I switched careers in 1987 to focus solely on AIDS prevention education. Starting from scratch, we helped develop behavior-based programs to reduce risk and educate society. It took four years to develop an antibody test and another decade to find interventions and drugs to reduce the death rate.  Since 1981 AIDS has taken a toll of 32 million souls, and counting. Interestingly, Dr. Anthony Fauci was a leader and hero in the fight against AIDS. Today he is the most respected expert on Covid-19 in America. 

Profound change in society resulted from the HIV pandemic including changes in sex education, viral and behavioral medicine, drug treatment, marriage laws, health privacy, and lifestyle choices.   Coronavirus will be making long-term changes too.

As with HIV/AIDS, in Covid we lost valuable time at the beginning, with politics and denial slowing the response. Now that the initial shock to society is wearing off, the real work will continue.   If we’re smart, we will listen to the experts in medicine, virology, epidemiology, and public health.  We fill follow their guidelines, increase research on treatments and vaccines, finally ramp up testing, and hopefully learn from our mistakes.  We will care for the sick, protect our seniors, and rebuild our economies.  Leaders will emerge and ideally, we will embrace new found appreciation for the essential workers who kept things going during the turmoil. But this crisis won’t be over by Memorial Day, or the Fourth Of July, or Labor Day. There is a chance the pestilence will take many more lives this coming fall and winter. What we will have is a new normal that may not include packing thousands of people like sardines on cruise ships or squeezing hundreds of travelers onto each other’s laps on airplanes.  

If we learn from history and follow the science, maybe we will also finally understand that humanity is interconnected worldwide, and part of a finite ecosystem that is more fragile than we once thought.  As mankind’s world population nears eight billion people, maybe we will learn to live in a way that is more sustainable and in harmony with nature. The alternative will not be pretty.