I clicked "unsubscribe" because it was the worst kind of thing you can say - not because it was offensive, rude, or heretical; not because it was ageist, racist, or sexist; I clicked "unsubscribe" because suggesting that we passed the test of COVID-19 with "flying colors" was false. The first time I read the sentence, it registered just enough for me to stop and think about it for a few seconds. I went back and reread it, then immediately scrolled to the bottom of the page because I don't subscribe to that kind of thinking. Four hundred thousand Americans dead, and counting - if that's the standard for passing the coronavirus test with "flying colors", I'd like to switch to another school.
But my haste to file a transfer application puts me at risk of overlooking a critical point - my grievance with the standard is likely a reflection of the system rather than a complaint specific to one institution; my above protest represents more about how I've had enough of one accepted narrative regarding the COVID-19 response than it does reflect an isolated reaction to one person's perspective. There is a sizable number of people who approved of the national strategy throughout 2020 - among political independents, the rate has hovered around 35% for the past few months - so my assumption is that at least 100 million Americans agree with the "flying colors" statement, or at least find nothing objectionable in it. I may hold a different perspective, but in such a large country I shouldn't be taken by surprise when I encounter someone who feels that future generations will look back on 2020 as another successful year for the USA.
The historian with a broader lens may reach a third conclusion about the past year - not that it was a success or a failure, but that it was consistent. The America I've learned about has completed one glorious accomplishment after another with the barest regard for its most vulnerable people, trampling underfoot anyone who stood in the way as it marched from sea to shining sea; the details of time and place as it relates to COVID-19 fill themselves into the new chapters of history books as if directed by a fresh Mad Lib. Is it the story of the sick and elderly, who suffered disproportionately despite the almost immediate understanding that they were at higher risk for serious consequences of the disease? Or is it about minorities reprising their role at the bottom rung of the ladder? The account of reduced or lost opportunities for working women is yet another example of a familiar American tale refreshing itself with 2020's specifics.
I sympathize with anyone outraged, upset, or aggrieved by these realities, but I remind you that ageism, racism, and sexism are among the consistent themes of the national story; there was nothing novel about how these prejudices influenced the response to the novel coronavirus. However, the pesky fact of certain counter-examples challenge my conviction that 2020's legacy should be defined solely in terms of these "-isms". Every carefully chosen anecdote strips the above generalizations of their explanatory power - the elderly at the front of the vaccine line, the white worker who lost the job, the glass ceiling shattered by Vice-President Harris. Such considerations are not enough for me to think differently about the underlying factors in the story of 2020, but perhaps they matter enough to influence some into thinking we passed the coronavirus test with flying colors; it leaves me searching for a larger connecting thread to strengthen my objection.
It may be an oversimplification, but perhaps the appropriate summary of the COVID-19 response is that it protected anyone who could afford it. This of course isn't strictly true, no such announcement in those terms was made anywhere in the country, but when I think about the reality of a spring lockdown and its ensuing effect on local economies my logical conclusion is that risk reduction became a luxury good, a new product available on the marketplace with the implied caveat - if you can afford it. The phrase has the right feel to me, and even if it's not quite up to the standard of a national slogan it could certainly be the expected addendum - six feet apart, if you can afford it; stay home and stop the spread, if you can afford it; put others at risk, if you can afford it. It's never been so obvious as it is today, when after ten months of the pandemic leaders are still wrapping their heads around the concept of hazard pay for essential workers, but you can see its consistent presence in the history of American life - the land of opportunity, if you can afford it.
For me, the 2020 story will be retold by future generations to impart a simple lesson - human society still felt it could afford poverty. This is based on straightforward observations - the World Bank estimates that COVID-19 containment measures will contribute to as many as 125 million people being pushed into new poverty by the end of 2021; worldwide, extreme poverty will increase for the first time in twenty years. This should be the first line in any calculation regarding the full cost of the pandemic, but I'm not confident that others will do this math. When people today talk about "returning to normal", what they mean is a world free of COVID-19, but such comments seem unaware of how much additional work is required if we use a more inclusive definition of normal - the challenge is not just controlling a respiratory illness but also lifting those 125 million people back out of poverty. In my mind, we could be a full decade from returning to the conditions at the start of 2020, from "returning to normal", at least from the perspective of how many people live in poverty. I think future generations will find something revolting about our current times, and it will be the COVID-19 pandemic response that highlights their disgust - how was poverty allowed to last for so long? The simple answer will be that it continued because enough people believed in it.
As you can guess, I feel that this mentality will change at some point in the future. I believe that people will eventually talk about poverty in the way we anticipate someday talking about COVID-19: as a recollection about an extinct characteristic of a long-lost past. The difference between COVID-19 and poverty in the current moment, the reason why COVID-19 will end before poverty, is belief. We believe we can eradicate COVID-19, which is evident in the way we've committed every available resource to its immediate eradication. The effort directed against COVID-19, primarily toward the development of a safe, effective, and ubiquitous vaccine, reflects a shared understanding that this disease is wrong, and confirms a collective imagination that can envision a world free of the condition - put the two together and we have all the mutual motivation required to complete the job.
The poverty question, however, is a little different - we do not believe it can be eradicated. We've known poverty is wrong for a long time, evidenced by past support for large-scale interventions, and we should all be proud of the various unpublicized ways individuals and collectives have come together throughout history to help the neediest among us. But when it comes to envisioning a poverty-free future I sense that our collective imagination still comes up short - we concede that governments, individual effort, and luck all play a vital role in lifting people out of poverty, but we don't go so far as to prioritize poverty eradication as a national mission; there is no current equivalent to Operation Warp Speed in terms of urgency, goals, or ambition. My fear is that the average person considers poverty an unwelcome but inevitable side effect of civilization, as inseparable from progress as the salt is from ocean water, and about which little can be done at a societal level to affect permanent change. I wondered a few months ago why Bernie Sanders in particular and politicians more generally refused to run on a basic platform of poverty eradication - the honest answer may reveal a fear that no one would care enough to support such a candidate, with voters citing either pragmatism or incomprehension at the polls as they cast their ballots for the more sensible opponent.
I ask myself if the conversation around poverty would change with the introduction of certain vocabulary, analogies, or mental models. For example, what if an idea like universal basic income was presented as a crude attempt at developing a vaccine against poverty? It's hard to know exactly what must happen to change the poverty conversation, but I am sure this is an absolutely necessary step. At the crux of the issue is the way policy proposals aimed at alleviating poverty often get bogged down by the particulars, which leads to the kind of discourse that first made me suspect the fundamental issue - most people who don't believe in the possibility of eradication will confound an expression of their worldview with an argument about logistical challenges. Quite frankly, I don't know a single person who thinks poverty is eradicable, but rather than say so these people instead express themselves in the language of affordability, citing various reasons why such a goal is unrealistic; they are not cruel people, but a lack of creativity comes off as the same thing if it prevents them from considering the possibility of solving a crucial issue. It's almost as if they are using concerns about feasibility as a way to disguise bad faith as good reason.
The biggest obstacle in the battle against poverty, then, is the lack of imagination in the average person - the failure to imagine a world where everyone has enough, the failure to imagine policy as a form of economic vaccine, the failure to imagine solutions for today's urgent issues that protect our most vulnerable from losing the hard-won progress of recent years and decades. It's the failure to see that policies which offer risk protection only to those who can afford it is hardly an example of passing a test with flying colors. It's the failure to see that history repeats itself only when we ignore the morals of its stories. What's the moral of the story of 2020? It's the same as before because its the same old story, but only louder this time, more urgent - a society that limits itself to those who can afford it risks becoming the society that can't afford anything at all.
So what can be done? Everything we can, I suspect, but the first thing is to consider the consensus, which is the worst kind there is - not offensive, rude, or heretical; not racist, sexist, or bigoted; it's the worst kind of consensus because it's false. It's this consensus that repeats the same old story - sure, it's a great idea to eradicate poverty, if you can afford it. Can we afford not to? The reason why we rose to the challenge of COVID-19 is because a collective mindset enabled us to see that the disease has no place in this world, and that with commitment and investment it could be defeated; we are turning the tide. But if we viewed COVID-19 with the same lens we viewed poverty, we'd be forever stuck in 2020 - the possibility of inventing protection would never occur to us. Am I supposed to believe that the richest country in the world, and world history, can do no more than stand aside and wring its hands while almost ten percent of the world's population lives in poverty, and welcomes even more into its swelling ranks? Would you say we are passing the test of global poverty with flying colors? I don't subscribe to that kind of thinking, and neither should anybody else.
