0:01

If there's one thing we know

0:04

about social media, it's that misinformation

0:06

is everywhere, especially when it comes

0:08

to personal finance. Financially inclined from

0:10

marketplace is a podcast you can

0:12

trust to help you get serious

0:15

about your money so you can

0:17

build a life you've always dreamed

0:19

of. I'm the host Janelius Pinal,

0:21

and each week I ask experts

0:23

important money questions. Like how to

0:26

negotiate job offers, how to choose

0:28

a college that you can afford,

0:30

and how to talk about money

0:33

with friends and families. Listen

0:35

to Financially Encline wherever you

0:37

get your podcasts. This episode

0:39

is brought to you by Progressive

0:42

Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial

0:44

geniuses, monetary magicians. These

0:46

are things people say

0:49

about drivers who switch

0:51

their car insurance to

0:53

progressive and save hundreds.

0:55

Visit Progressive.com to see

0:58

if you could save.

1:00

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company

1:02

and affiliates potential savings

1:05

will vary, not available

1:07

in all states for

1:09

situations. Everybody listening right

1:12

now has survived COVID.

1:14

Some of us had a rough

1:16

go of it. Some have suffered

1:18

the strange miseries of long COVID,

1:20

but all of us are here

1:22

today. We have that in common.

1:24

The other thing we have in

1:26

common, including the small fraction of

1:29

us who never got sick at

1:31

all, is that the pandemic changed

1:33

us. From K-E-R-A in Dallas, this

1:35

is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. The ways

1:37

that COVID shaped the country were

1:39

impossible to ignore in the earliest

1:41

days of lockdowns and masks and

1:43

parking lot test sites. But my

1:45

guest lays out the case in

1:47

a recent New York Times opinion

1:49

article that some of the most

1:51

significant effects happened well beyond the

1:53

health care system. The greatest lingering

1:55

effect of the pandemic may be

1:57

on how we view our fellow

1:59

citizens. and essayist. His New

2:01

York Times article was titled How

2:03

COVID Remaid America. David, welcome to

2:05

think. Thanks so much for having

2:07

me. The biggest change, you note,

2:09

honestly is counterintuitive. For a while,

2:11

we all followed the same recommendations

2:13

together, but the end result of

2:15

all this was that we became

2:17

hyper individualists. What do you mean

2:19

by that? Well, when I look

2:22

back on the early days of

2:24

the pandemic, I'm honestly kind of

2:26

inspired by the amount of breast

2:28

taking solidarity that we showed that

2:30

we showed at a concern for

2:32

one another and obviously to some

2:34

degree out of fear. Basically all

2:36

of us across the country and

2:38

indeed all across the world suspended

2:40

huge portions of our lives for

2:42

a period of weeks or months

2:44

depending on how you want to

2:46

count in order to protect one

2:48

another and to limit the amount

2:50

of spread of this virus. And

2:52

that lasted months maybe into the

2:54

summer of 2020. And when we

2:56

started to return to something like

2:58

our normal lives as the pandemic

3:00

emergency ground on, people were still

3:02

dying, people were still getting sick,

3:04

that more Americans were having an

3:06

experience of the world like they've

3:08

had before the pandemic, we sort

3:10

of grew on those ugly lessons.

3:12

And rather than have feeling a

3:14

sense of sort of survivor's guilt,

3:16

you know, a sense of why,

3:18

why, why, why did we survive

3:20

while other suffered and other side?

3:22

We sort of had more of

3:25

what I call the peace survivors

3:27

resentment. Having survived the pandemic, we

3:29

looked back on the burden of

3:31

responsibility towards one another, the obligations

3:33

that we felt during that early

3:35

period. And we thought to ourselves,

3:37

why do we have to, why

3:39

did we have to do that?

3:41

So David, we were taking in

3:43

information about the outside world almost

3:45

exclusively through screens for a while

3:47

and seeing other people in some

3:49

ways more like mindless drones than

3:51

actual humans. For those who don't

3:53

play video games, What is a

3:55

non-player character? Yeah, this is a

3:57

term that I frankly hadn't heard

3:59

of until a few years ago,

4:01

but has become an increasingly common,

4:03

you could almost call it a

4:05

slur, particularly on the sort of

4:07

online, right? It refers to other

4:09

characters in a video game, beside

4:11

the protagonist, which is to say,

4:13

if you're playing a video game,

4:15

if you're playing a first person

4:17

shooter, or something like that, there

4:19

are all of these other figures

4:21

in the, in your field of

4:23

vision, who you're encountering in various

4:25

ways, but who are there. only

4:28

to serve your story. And you

4:30

can kill them, you can negotiate

4:32

them, whatever the game is, you

4:34

know, the means that your interactions

4:36

with them vary from game to

4:38

game. But over the last few

4:40

years, especially in the aftermath of

4:42

the COVID pandemic, we started seeing

4:44

this term applied to people in

4:46

the real world. It is now

4:48

the way that many, you know,

4:50

many people online refer to mindless,

4:52

thoughtless sort of, you know, followers

4:54

who don't think for themselves, who

4:56

don't act for themselves, who go

4:58

about their lives in a sort

5:00

of wrote, predictable way, controlled by

5:02

forces, much bigger than them, and

5:04

don't think much about who's doing

5:06

the dictating of those terms. It

5:08

was in fact, you know, when

5:10

when this is a little bit

5:12

in the weeds, but There was

5:14

all of this tumult on the

5:16

in Silicon Valley about the Trump

5:18

election and many of the biggest

5:20

figures in the tech world came

5:22

out in support of the now

5:24

president even though many of them

5:26

had opposed him very loudly four

5:29

and eight years before and some

5:31

of them were somewhat called to

5:33

account for that and Sam Altman

5:35

the head of open AI said

5:37

explicitly. My democratic sympathy is in

5:39

previous cycles were a result of

5:41

the fact that I had been

5:43

basically an NPC with regard to

5:45

my politics before. And now that

5:47

I've started to think for myself,

5:49

I see the light of the

5:51

right wing turn. and they're now

5:53

supportive of the precedent's somewhat tech

5:55

accelerationist agenda. I think this is,

5:57

you know, this is a term

5:59

that comes out of gaming culture,

6:01

it's being used increasingly by the

6:03

oligarchs of the, of Silicon Valley,

6:05

but I think it also tells

6:07

us something about the social transformations

6:09

that we've undertaken much bigger than

6:11

those little niche areas, which is

6:13

just to say, I think as

6:15

I mentioned a minute ago, the

6:17

pandemic taught us in some profound

6:19

way. to regard one another to

6:21

some extent as threats and to

6:23

some extent as non-people. And that

6:25

transformation hasn't been total of course.

6:27

There's still, you know, there's still

6:29

a lot of great solidaristic action

6:32

going on around the world. People

6:34

do care about one another, you

6:36

know, outside the boundaries of their

6:38

families. But I think it's somewhat

6:40

unmistakable that when you take in

6:42

the full scope of American culture

6:44

and society at the present in

6:46

2025, that there's been this sort

6:48

of... coarsening of our relationship to

6:50

one another over the last five

6:52

years in which many more people

6:54

are much more comfortable saying, I'm

6:56

not going to recognize the rights

6:58

of others, I'm just going to

7:00

grab for what I want for

7:02

myself and in fact see their

7:04

main job as a human and

7:06

as a citizen as being acquisitive

7:08

in that way, in that way,

7:10

self-interested in that way. So blame

7:12

and shame were quickly launched after

7:14

the initial panic wore off by

7:16

the right and by the left.

7:18

What forms did those things take

7:20

as soon as the initial panic

7:22

receded? Yeah, I think it's important

7:24

to remember actually something that most

7:26

of us resist remembering, which is

7:28

that the year 2020, that first

7:30

year of pandemic response, was actually

7:32

featured considerably less. tribal division than

7:35

we tend to remember now. You

7:37

know, the state home orders were

7:39

launched by every state within 10

7:41

days of each other. Schools were

7:43

closed in all states across the

7:45

country within 10 days of each

7:47

other. And by all of these

7:49

other measures, you know, mask guidelines

7:51

and restrictions on social gatherings and

7:53

advice to businesses about how many

7:55

people to let in their doors,

7:57

not to mention mobility data that

7:59

shows how many Americans actually moved

8:01

around and directed with each other

8:03

in places like bars and restaurants

8:05

and malls. But all of these

8:07

measures, red states and blue states

8:09

acted pretty much in unison for

8:11

at least the first six months

8:13

of the pandemic, which is to

8:15

say the spring and summer. of

8:17

2020. They started to diverge a

8:19

little bit in the fall. Some

8:21

Republican governors tried to, you know,

8:23

pull back restrictions and sort of

8:25

restart the economy as they would

8:27

put it. But many of them

8:29

actually got frustrated, had frustrated experiences

8:31

doing that because they would find

8:33

that when they pulled back restrictions,

8:35

the disease came warm back, and

8:38

it was a sort of necessary

8:40

response to reimpose or at least

8:42

re-advised many of these guidelines that

8:44

they had tried to wind down

8:46

just a few weeks before. And

8:48

one last thing about all of

8:50

that is, you know, all of

8:52

these guidelines, all of these policies,

8:54

they really were voluntary. outside of

8:56

school closures and you know the

8:58

the closures of of particular you

9:00

know government buildings and institutions and

9:02

agencies almost everything that we remember

9:04

as quote unquote lockdown was really

9:06

performed by people. hearing guidelines guidance

9:08

from public health officials but then

9:10

taking action on their own. There

9:12

were not very many examples of

9:14

people say getting tickets for behaving

9:16

poorly. There were a few, but

9:18

it wasn't like if you walked

9:20

outside of your house during shelter

9:22

in place that you were immediately

9:24

arrested as was the case in

9:26

China and to some extent in

9:28

parts of Latin America and Europe.

9:30

Americans had a pretty soft touch

9:32

experience of the pandemic. they were

9:34

doing what they were doing, which

9:36

is to say living in quite

9:39

restricted and limited ways, also somewhat

9:41

voluntarily and out of personal fear.

9:43

But I think that part of

9:45

it produced a lot of resentment.

9:47

You know. We didn't want to

9:49

believe that we were doing this

9:51

on our own, electing to live

9:53

in this way. We wanted to

9:55

believe, especially as we grew more

9:57

and more frustrated with that state

9:59

of affairs, that there was someone

10:01

to blame. And that blame as

10:03

often is the case in American

10:05

culture these days, took on quite

10:07

partisan valence. And I'm sure listeners

10:09

will remember in 2020, all of

10:11

the attention paid to Donald Trump's

10:13

mismanagement of the pandemic. all of

10:15

the liberal outrage about how he

10:17

had diminished the threat, mishandled the

10:19

public response, you know, advised some

10:21

treatments that were kind of obviously

10:23

nonsensical or even harmful, and in

10:25

general, just did not seem to

10:27

be taking, you know, COVID seriously

10:29

at all, even as it killed

10:31

tens of thousands of Americans, indeed

10:33

hundreds of thousands of Americans on

10:35

his watch. But on the right,

10:37

you had especially over the course

10:39

of 2020 and evolving... scapegoating blame

10:42

game and you know relatively quickly

10:44

people on the right started to

10:46

pin the blame on especially Anthony

10:48

Fauci but more generally the public

10:50

health apparatus which they understood to

10:52

be essentially a democratic force and

10:54

resented the imposition of restrictions and

10:56

blamed the left for those restrictions.

10:58

In both of these cases I

11:00

think the story is actually pretty

11:02

misleading. I think if we look

11:04

back on the pandemic from the

11:06

vantage of 2025, it's really hard

11:08

to say that the whole thing

11:10

was Donald Trump's fault and that

11:12

if we had just had the,

11:14

you know, wisdom to listen to

11:16

the scientists in January and February

11:18

of 2020, that we would have

11:20

avoided the whole thing altogether. Probably

11:22

we would have avoided some amount

11:24

of the death and suffering that

11:26

we experienced. We would have had

11:28

a better, lighter pandemic, but we

11:30

wouldn't have avoided it. The whole

11:32

world got this disease, and that

11:34

shows us that there was almost

11:36

nothing we could do to truly,

11:38

truly stop it, only slow it

11:40

down. And on the other side

11:42

of things, you know, as I

11:45

mentioned a few minutes ago, red

11:47

states actually behaved quite similarly to

11:49

blue states for the entire period

11:51

of time that is now remembered

11:53

as lockdown. And Anthony Fauci himself

11:55

was on TV in early May

11:57

of 2020, saying there's nothing we

11:59

can do to force people to

12:01

behave in a certain way. Everybody's

12:03

going to have to decide how

12:05

to navigate this pandemic for themselves.

12:07

The most we can do is

12:09

give them the information that we

12:11

have about what risks there are

12:13

and hope that they make responsible

12:15

rather than irresponsible choices. He was

12:17

saying that. in May of 2020,

12:19

at which point something like 70,000

12:21

Americans had died, we are now

12:23

at 1.5 million. We are so

12:25

far beyond that moment. And yet

12:27

we, so many of us, look

12:29

back and think that Anthony Fauci

12:31

himself and the public health apparatus

12:33

in general, was locking us into

12:35

our own homes for you know

12:37

for what we remember is the

12:39

duration of the pandemic I think

12:41

both of those stories are really

12:43

misleading or least simplistic but they

12:45

tell us something profound about the

12:48

psychological response that we almost all

12:50

of us had about this pandemic

12:52

which is the main experience of

12:54

it the central traumatic experience of

12:56

being surrounded by so much death

12:58

being overwhelmed by fear and panic

13:00

ourselves seeing our lives upended that

13:02

was really intolerable to so many

13:04

Americans and we dealt with that.

13:06

by choosing to believe that it

13:08

could have been avoided. And depending

13:10

on our politics and who we

13:12

are, we place that blame on

13:14

different people. Some of us place

13:16

to blame on different people at

13:18

different points in time. But the

13:20

underlying impulse, I think, was almost

13:22

universal to look back on the

13:24

pandemic and think and feel as

13:26

though if a few different choices

13:28

have been made of the outset,

13:30

the whole thing could have been

13:32

avoided. And if we believe that.

13:34

then we believe that none of

13:36

the lessons that we felt none

13:38

of the things we felt in

13:40

2020 none of that vulnerability None

13:42

of that sense of, you know,

13:44

deep, deep interconnectedness and, you know,

13:46

the responsibility that we'd feel to

13:49

one another, but also how much

13:51

we owed our own health to

13:53

the behavior of others, none of

13:55

those things had to be true.

13:57

We could just believe, you know,

13:59

for instance, if Donald Trump had

14:01

hit the science button in January

14:03

2020, the whole thing could have

14:05

been avoided, or if Anthony Fauci

14:07

had had the wisdom to not

14:09

shut down society and lock us

14:11

in our homes, the whole thing

14:13

could have been avoided. For me,

14:15

the big lesson is the whole

14:17

thing could not have been avoided,

14:19

but all of these second order

14:21

and third order effects that we're

14:23

dealing with now are in part

14:25

the result of our unwillingness to

14:27

see how big a deal the

14:29

disease was, how necessary the response

14:31

was, if imperfect, and how just

14:33

how much it asked of us

14:35

to try to respond and protect

14:37

one another in the face of

14:39

a generational infectious disease threat. David,

14:41

you note that the pandemic marked

14:43

both the apex and the end

14:45

of a decade of protest. What

14:47

made the demonstrations over George Floyd's

14:49

murder in the summer of 2020

14:52

intersect with our conflicts over COVID

14:54

in such a profound way? Well,

14:56

to hear those on the right.

14:58

tell it. They revealed the hypocrisy

15:00

of liberal public health guidance, which

15:02

is to say we had sent

15:04

a number of months hearing from

15:06

public health officials that it was

15:08

incredibly dangerous to congregate even outside.

15:10

And then in the face of,

15:12

you know, arising social movement, guidance

15:14

from many of those same officials

15:16

saying in the case of this

15:18

political politically urgent cause, it was

15:20

okay in terms of public health

15:22

to do that. And I think

15:24

there are a lot of folks

15:26

on the right who felt that

15:28

that was the sort of that

15:30

was the moment that they stopped

15:32

trusting the guidance of public health

15:34

officials. But I think the story

15:36

is actually quite bigger than that,

15:38

which is to say, you know,

15:40

I think one reason why so

15:42

many people were drawn. out to

15:44

those protests beyond the immediate shock

15:46

and horror of the death of

15:48

George Floyd was that we had

15:50

been, you know, hold up in

15:52

our homes for a period of

15:55

time. We were on some of

15:57

a whole desperate to connect to

15:59

have some social experience and to

16:01

feel that we were part of

16:03

a larger society, a larger movement.

16:05

I think the protests were as

16:07

large as they were. partly as

16:09

a way of channeling a lot

16:11

of that frustration and sort of

16:13

stir crazy energy which had been

16:15

pent up for the course of

16:17

months. And it also fundamentally raised

16:19

a couple of key questions which

16:21

we then began wrestling with and

16:23

reckoning with going forward. One was.

16:25

about how we mourn each other.

16:27

I mean, I think it's sometimes

16:29

easy to forget that on some

16:31

level, the George Floyd protests were

16:33

about the death of an individual

16:35

person and how we should recognize

16:37

and deal with that trauma. And

16:39

I think that that connected in

16:41

some deep ways to people who

16:43

had lost loved ones, had not

16:45

been able to have funerals, were

16:47

struggling with how to understand the

16:49

political implications or aspects of some

16:51

family members' death from COVID. I

16:53

also think He raised these profound

16:55

questions about social order. You know,

16:58

we had just had this period

17:00

of time when we essentially suspended

17:02

society. We were beginning to just

17:04

beginning to get back on our

17:06

feet and go back out into

17:08

the world. And we didn't know

17:10

exactly what level of fear to

17:12

have about that experience. We didn't

17:14

know what to expect when we

17:16

stepped outside of our doors. We

17:18

had spent a number of those

17:20

months living in fear of one

17:22

another as we were talking about

17:24

earlier and worrying about what would

17:26

meet us when we opened our

17:28

door. And in the years that

17:30

followed the protests, in part because

17:32

of, you know, kind of second

17:34

order effects of the pandemic, which

17:36

involved a brief spike in violent

17:38

crime levels and a sense of

17:40

cities being emptied out and, you

17:42

know, a more apparent sort of

17:44

social urban crisis than most Americans

17:46

had seen in a few decades,

17:48

we started. to think again in

17:50

ways that many of us have

17:52

been wrestling or did wrestle with

17:54

in say the 1970s, think again

17:56

about what level of order we

17:59

expect or demand from our society,

18:01

what level of disorder and disruption

18:03

we're willing to accept and how

18:05

to renegotiate the social contract in

18:07

the aftermath of this great disruption

18:09

so that we felt safe and

18:11

comfortable in the environments that we,

18:13

you know, that we live in,

18:15

especially urban environments. But I also

18:17

think there was this, you know,

18:19

you know, longer term story in

18:21

which in the aftermath of the

18:23

financial crisis, all through COVID, not

18:25

just in the US, but around

18:27

the world, we have seen an

18:29

outpouring of protest energy. You know,

18:31

we saw the Tea Party and

18:33

Occupy Wall Street in the US.

18:35

There was, you know, the Arab

18:37

Spring across the Arab world. We

18:39

saw, you know, a ton of

18:41

protest energy after the election of

18:43

Donald Trump in 2016, the Women's

18:45

March. These huge global climate strikes

18:47

happening. George Floyd was the American

18:49

apex of that decade, but I

18:51

think in the aftermath of the

18:53

pandemic as we were speaking about

18:55

a few minutes ago, so many

18:57

of us have this adopted a

18:59

more self interested, close minded, narrow

19:02

minded view of the world and

19:04

of our relationship to one another

19:06

that we weren't as interested in

19:08

participating in mass protests and we're

19:10

just interested and focused on securing

19:12

a comfortable stable. life for ourselves

19:14

and those we loved. And I

19:16

think we've seen as a result

19:18

a real decline again not just

19:20

in the US but around the

19:22

world in interest in protest. And

19:24

in fact in parts of the

19:26

world a criminalization of protest that's

19:28

followed where those who are not

19:30

engaging in you know in mass

19:32

gatherings are now taking a much

19:34

more hardline view of what what

19:36

counts as an acceptable interruption to

19:38

daily life and what kind of

19:40

activist action should be punished with

19:42

with jail time. I think this

19:44

is a quite quite concerning trend.

19:46

And you see it, you know,

19:48

in a climate space, you see

19:50

it in person. over Gaza, you

19:52

see it really across the board,

19:54

a sort of a criminalization of

19:56

protest, which is on the one

19:58

hand, coming out of, you know,

20:00

a long-standing right-wing playbook, but on

20:02

the other hand is enabled by

20:05

a sort of liberal sense that,

20:07

you know, we should really just

20:09

be focusing on getting back on

20:11

our feet and don't want to

20:13

have our lives interrupted by the

20:15

messiness of the pandemic. There was

20:17

a lot of emergency stimulus spending

20:19

during the Biden presidency designed to

20:21

mitigate financial fallout from the pandemic.

20:23

How much does it matter how

20:25

we spent that influx of cash?

20:27

I think it ended up being

20:29

quite illustrative. I don't know if

20:31

it's necessarily all that consequential because

20:33

in my view at least the

20:35

inflation that followed the pandemic was

20:37

largely powered by the pandemic itself,

20:39

which is to say disruptions to

20:41

the supply chain, much more so

20:43

than the extra money that we

20:45

poured into the economy. But America

20:47

survived the pandemic economically much better

20:49

than any of its peers, in

20:51

part because we spent much more

20:53

money doing so. You know, we,

20:55

many Americans, you know, especially leading

20:57

up into the 2024 election, would

20:59

tell posters, they were really unhappy

21:01

with the state of the economy.

21:03

They were especially unhappy with the

21:05

cost of living. citizens in our

21:08

peer countries were much more unhappy

21:10

than Americans were because the economies

21:12

of those countries suffered much more

21:14

dramatically. Many of these countries in

21:16

Europe, you know, have had marginal

21:18

or no economic growth at all

21:20

since 2008 and were struggling to

21:22

maintain even a kind of a

21:24

flat line through the pandemic. And

21:26

the US, by contrast, you know,

21:28

had a booming experience of GDP.

21:30

It wasn't felt by all Americans.

21:32

even though we had record low

21:34

unemployment as well. But we had

21:36

a softer experience of the pandemic

21:38

itself than many people in other

21:40

countries. And I think in a

21:42

perverse way, that may also be

21:44

one partial reason for why we

21:46

came out of the pandemic so

21:48

resentful because we didn't actually. feel

21:50

so many of us the real

21:52

pinch of probation. We were actually

21:54

relatively comfortable sitting at home relatively

21:56

safe observing the pandemic on our

21:58

phones and wondering why our lives

22:00

weren't normal. But in the long

22:02

term it also means that we

22:04

spent a ton of money which

22:06

we're probably not going to be

22:09

able to spend again at least

22:11

for a period of a decade

22:13

or so. As I said I

22:15

think the inflation that we saw

22:17

was mostly about the pandemic itself

22:19

but the inflation the the interest

22:21

rate hikes that were taken in

22:23

response to that of inflation to

22:25

try to get it under control

22:27

mean that the cost of borrowing

22:29

money is now much higher than

22:31

it was for the full decade

22:33

or more after the financial crisis

22:35

of 2008. And that means that

22:37

both for governments and for individuals

22:39

doing anything is just much more

22:41

expensive. And so the kinds of

22:43

social programs that people on the

22:45

left were considering or pushing for

22:47

in the years before the pandemic,

22:49

you know, a true, to refer

22:51

to Bernie Sanders' campaign promises. Those

22:53

are basically off the table now,

22:55

and they're off the table not

22:57

just in the US, but around

22:59

the world. We did have this

23:01

kind of inspiring 18-month period where

23:03

the US essentially built a European

23:05

social welfare state in order to

23:07

make people's lives through the pandemic

23:09

a bit more comfortable, but those

23:12

programs were almost all on my

23:14

island. And as I say, I

23:16

don't think we're going to be

23:18

seeing them again any time soon.

23:20

How was the aftermath of the

23:22

pandemic a factor in President Trump's

23:24

re-election in 2024? Well, the first

23:26

thing I would say is that

23:28

I think it's possible it affected

23:30

his re-election in 2020, you know,

23:32

especially looking at how popular he

23:34

was and how highly people raided

23:36

his... first term in retrospect this

23:38

time around, you could wonder whether

23:40

if there had not been a

23:42

pandemic in 2020, whether he would

23:44

have coasted to re-election back then.

23:46

That was not how most people

23:48

saw it at the time. He

23:50

was historically unpopular incumbent in general

23:52

people. thought that he was likely

23:54

to lose a devastating defeat no

23:56

matter the state of the pandemic.

23:58

And all of the polls suggested

24:00

he was going to lose by

24:02

a really a stark margin. But

24:04

the race ended up actually being

24:06

relatively close, much closer than those

24:08

polls suggested. And it's not hard

24:10

to imagine in the absence of

24:12

the disease and all of the

24:15

sort of evident indifference that he

24:17

exhibited that Americans would have chosen

24:19

to reelect him. There was an

24:21

additional sort of micro consideration, which

24:23

is that. The news of the

24:25

vaccines and their their efficacy was

24:27

announced just after the election even

24:29

though it was originally scheduled to

24:31

be announced just before the election

24:33

and that's another instance in which

24:35

if they stuck to the original

24:37

schedule and just a few days

24:39

before election day Donald Trump's operation

24:41

warp speed had been you know

24:43

declared a huge success with all

24:45

of these vaccines that were full

24:47

of incredible promise to bring the

24:49

pandemic to an end, which is

24:51

what people were saying and thinking

24:53

at the time. It's also possible

24:55

that given the smallest of the

24:57

margin in 2020, even given the

24:59

pandemic, that that news would have

25:01

pushed him over the edge to

25:03

victory. But fast forward four years,

25:05

and you know, I think basically

25:07

Americans started looking at their recent

25:09

past with a lot more frustration,

25:11

discomfort. I think there are a

25:13

lot of aspects to that. Some

25:15

of those are real and material.

25:18

You know, the inflation did for

25:20

many people outpaced economic growth, which

25:22

meant they were relatively speaking worse

25:24

off than they had been four

25:26

years ago, despite America's exceptional economic

25:28

performance. I think there were things

25:30

about pandemic policy that they were

25:32

sent to some degree, you know,

25:34

for instance, the school closures, but

25:36

not limited to them. And I

25:38

think that they had a sense

25:40

that the Democratic Party had through

25:42

the pandemic comes so to embody

25:44

institutional establishmentarian values that if for

25:46

whatever reason they were feeling like,

25:48

you know, anti establishment impulses or

25:50

energies or feelings, that those would

25:52

inevitably pull. towards the Republican Party,

25:54

which is not exactly what would

25:56

have been a case for eight

25:58

or certainly 12 or 16 years

26:00

ago, when the Republican Party was

26:02

in many ways identified with the

26:04

establishment as much or more as

26:06

the Democratic Party was. But I

26:08

also think even beyond all of

26:10

those factors, we had a sense

26:12

that we were, you know, we

26:14

were surrounded by, we were surrounded

26:16

by death. We had had much

26:19

darker. four or five years than

26:21

we ever expected we would have

26:23

to deal with in the modern

26:25

world and the rich modern world.

26:27

And there was something that even

26:29

if we didn't talk about it

26:31

in terms of COVID, in terms

26:33

of death, there was something about

26:35

that just didn't sit right with

26:37

people. When they looked back, they

26:39

just didn't think that. things were

26:41

on the right track and how

26:43

could they when one and a

26:45

half million Americans had died tens

26:47

of millions have been hospitalized several

26:49

million were left disabled by the

26:51

experience of this disease on all

26:53

of these reasons were I think

26:55

adding to a deep sense of

26:57

unhappiness and malaise and we spent

26:59

you know people like me people

27:01

you know commentators and opinion writers,

27:03

columnists. We spent a good chunk

27:05

of the election season 2024 talking

27:07

about why there was this thing

27:09

called the vibe session, why if

27:11

there are all of the top

27:13

line numbers describing the state of

27:15

the American economy were so strong,

27:17

why so many people felt so

27:19

bad. I think as I said

27:22

a minute ago, there were material

27:24

reasons that help explain that, but

27:26

I also think if we're asking

27:28

ourselves, why were the vibes 2020

27:30

to 2024 so dark? To me,

27:32

the answer or one answer is

27:34

incredibly obvious, which is to say

27:36

we were surrounded by death in

27:38

a way that we none of

27:40

us ever expected we'd have to

27:42

be. David, it has struck me as

27:44

odd that we have not felt

27:46

unified in our grief over COVID deaths.

27:48

Was it simply impossible to have

27:50

a national day of mourning that might

27:53

have brought us back together, even

27:55

temporarily? It's hard to say. I mean,

27:57

this is one of the... those

27:59

things that, you know, if we could

28:01

have a different president in 2020,

28:03

we might have had a really different

28:06

relationship to the to the death

28:08

toll, or at least a somewhat different

28:10

relationship to the death toll. I

28:12

do think, you know, it's notable and

28:14

important when thinking about these questions

28:17

that as large as that death toll

28:19

was and globally we saw more

28:21

people die in 2020 than we'd seen

28:23

in any single year in human

28:25

history outside of World War one, World

28:28

War two. There was just a

28:30

lot more death than any of us

28:32

had ever experienced experienced Nevertheless, COVID

28:34

was a disease that it was incredibly

28:36

infectious, and it was relatively deadly,

28:38

but it was not remarkably deadly, which

28:41

meant that in a year like

28:43

2020, when something like 25% of Americans

28:45

got the disease, only 1% of

28:47

those infections resulted in death. And that

28:49

number is this really complicated in

28:51

between number, which is high enough. that

28:54

it creates a large total number of

28:56

deaths and low enough that many

28:58

people didn't even know anyone who died

29:00

in that period or if they

29:02

knew someone who was you know a

29:05

distant relative or someone they knew

29:07

loosely probably they were quite old because

29:09

the age was so dramatic with

29:11

someone in their 80s about a thousand

29:13

times more likely to die from

29:15

an infection than someone under the age

29:18

of 10 and that meant that

29:20

if we wanted to we could look

29:22

around and tell ourselves that the

29:24

disease actually wasn't that big a deal.

29:26

But I think that there's a

29:28

deeper impulse that lay behind our desire

29:31

to do just that. And that

29:33

is to, you know, resist the central

29:35

sort of uncomfortable lesson of this

29:37

pandemic, which is that in the modern

29:39

world, we are still vulnerable to

29:41

disease in the way that our ancestors

29:44

were. We have not built a

29:46

fortress of modernity that protects ourselves. 21st

29:48

century medicine cannot prevent a disease

29:50

like this from wreaking havoc on our

29:53

populations. In fact, you know, to

29:55

hear some people tell it because of

29:57

the, you know, the research again

29:59

function research that many people believe gave

30:01

rise to the disease. You could

30:03

even say the 21st century medicine and

30:06

science produced this plague. And all

30:08

of these are really uncomfortable lessons for

30:10

us. And so we sought out

30:12

ways of thinking about the death toll

30:14

that would allow us to not

30:16

confront it directly. And that is I

30:19

think where we find ourselves now

30:21

in 2025, which is to say we

30:23

sometimes talk about our pandemic experience.

30:25

We sometimes talk about, you know, how

30:27

strange it was to be at

30:29

home isolated for a period of months.

30:32

We sometimes lament the length of

30:34

school closures. You know, we may have,

30:36

if we're really in the weeds

30:38

about it, have complaints about public health

30:40

guidance in this direction of that

30:42

direction. But we don't actually center the

30:45

disease itself. and the mortality that

30:47

it produced the mass mortality that it

30:49

produced. And I think that's a

30:51

sign that we're just really deeply uncomfortable

30:53

with that. We don't want to

30:55

believe that there was that much death.

30:58

We want to think about the

31:00

whole pandemic experience as though, even if,

31:02

you know, as though the main

31:04

questions were these, these matters of how

31:06

much mitigation we undertook, whether we

31:08

did too much, whether we did too

31:11

little, and not centrally about how

31:13

many lives were lost, how many people

31:15

got sick, how many people got

31:17

sick. how many people are still sick.

31:20

And I think the reason for

31:22

that is that we are simply uncomfortable

31:24

with the real facts there, that

31:26

we don't want to believe that so

31:28

many Americans died. We don't want

31:30

to believe that the pandemic is still

31:33

circulating. We don't want to believe

31:35

that as many people as there are

31:37

still disabled from the experience. Because

31:39

we had such an uncomfortable time. trying

31:41

to protect one another in those

31:43

first few months, we basically want to

31:46

believe that there's no need to

31:48

protect one another now from this disease

31:50

or other diseases. And it's a

31:52

much more comfortable world to live in

31:54

where the disease was, you know,

31:56

just simply not that big a deal.

31:59

David, the ways we work change.

32:01

dramatically as a result of COVID, at

32:03

least for some of us. Most

32:05

people who are now able to work

32:07

from home seem to prefer it.

32:09

What are the drawbacks we might fail

32:12

to recognize? I think it's something

32:14

like the experience is that we had

32:16

towards the beginning of the pandemic,

32:18

which is to say that we are

32:20

disconnected from one another. We deprive

32:22

ourselves of the experience of social fabric

32:25

of the world. We start feeling

32:27

much more distended from communities and associations

32:29

that at least in previous generations

32:31

were the real sort of key features

32:33

of life in this country and

32:35

everywhere. And I do worry that, you

32:38

know, this is, you know, famous.

32:40

Robert Putnam book Bowling alone. The pandemic

32:42

helped us usher us into a,

32:44

usher us into a world in which

32:47

we're, we're doing many more things

32:49

than just bowling alone. We may go

32:51

into the office a few days

32:53

a week, but those are almost like

32:55

exceptional performances of social experience rather

32:57

than, you know, embodying an approach to

33:00

the world in which social experiences

33:02

embedded and interwoven into every aspect of

33:04

our daily lives. The pandemic is

33:06

not. the only factor there and many

33:08

people are living lives today much

33:10

like they did before the pandemic. But

33:13

I think to the extent that

33:15

as a society we're trending in that

33:17

direction, I do think it's sort

33:19

of inarguable and probably corrosive that we've

33:21

that the pandemic moved us further

33:23

along in that direction. It's easy to

33:26

overlook this because they strike us

33:28

as resilient, but the pandemic had a

33:30

very significant effect on young people,

33:32

children and teenagers. What do we know

33:34

about that five years long? Well,

33:36

I think most of the conversation about

33:39

this is really focused on the

33:41

experience of kids in school and particularly

33:43

focused on academic achievement as measured

33:45

by standardized tests and, you know, I'm

33:47

someone who's a little bit skeptical

33:49

of those measures to begin with but

33:52

taking them at face value, I

33:54

think we can say in the big

33:56

picture that school closures had a

33:58

negative effect on American academic achievement. But

34:00

that negative effect was relatively small,

34:02

all things considered, and that the country

34:05

has in the aftermath of the

34:07

pandemic emergency, someone overstated the impact. And

34:09

what I mean by that is,

34:11

you know, we have these sort of

34:14

gold standard national tests that are

34:16

come out every couple of years, and

34:18

they test fourth graders and eighth

34:20

graders for math and science, sorry, math

34:22

and reading. And, you know, these

34:24

are other measures that these are the

34:27

ones that educators have for decades.

34:29

treated as the sort of the true

34:31

North Star of educational, of testing.

34:33

And those show that in the years

34:35

immediately following the pandemic emergency, American

34:37

fourth graders and eighth graders did on

34:40

average, about as well as American

34:42

fourth and eighth graders did around the

34:44

turn of the century. So in

34:46

the year 2000, 2002, there was a

34:48

decline. that offset some of the

34:50

games that had been achieved over the

34:53

previous decades, but it was not

34:55

the case that, you know, eighth graders

34:57

were not reading like second graders

34:59

and fourth graders were not reading at

35:01

all. It's also the case that

35:03

those declines, at least the median declines,

35:06

began before the pandemic in about

35:08

2015 or 2016. And in some of

35:10

the charts tracking these these patterns,

35:12

you came and really see the pandemic

35:14

because the trajectory of decline is

35:16

so steady over the last decade. I

35:19

think that puts a slightly misleading

35:21

rosy picture on the effect of the

35:23

pandemic, although in general I would

35:25

say Americans think we've we've stuff you

35:27

know Americans have overstated how serious

35:29

the academic costs were because but nevertheless

35:32

I think that just looking at

35:34

the medians is a little bit too

35:36

rosy because the lower performing students

35:38

the most disadvantaged students have suffered more

35:41

and those are probably the people

35:43

who we need to pay it most

35:45

attention to. But in general I

35:47

don't think that the academic. burden of

35:49

this pandemic was or represents a

35:51

kind of a generational crisis, especially when

35:54

you consider all the other things

35:56

that American kids were dealing with and

35:58

their parents and the grandparents that

36:00

all of the ways to the society.

36:02

society as a whole was upended.

36:04

I think of most of them had

36:07

been offered the terms of the

36:09

deal ahead of time, which is to

36:11

say we're going to have this period

36:13

of time where you may be

36:15

out of school for six months, you

36:18

may be out of school for

36:20

18 months. All of society is going

36:22

to be upended. We're going to

36:24

have more than a million Americans die

36:26

tens of millions infected, everybody panicking

36:28

about this disease. And the effect on

36:31

your achievement or your kids achievement

36:33

is going to be that. he or

36:35

she will probably be performing about

36:37

as well as someone in that position

36:39

would have two decades ago. I

36:41

think most Americans would have taken that

36:44

deal. And that is essentially the

36:46

terms of the, the terms of the

36:48

deal. Why might the pandemic have

36:50

enabled the current backlash against the EI?

36:52

Well, I think the connection there

36:54

has to do with the social Darwinism

36:57

that I mentioned a little while

36:59

ago. One way that those of us

37:01

who survived the pandemic made sense

37:03

of our experience, was that the whole

37:06

thing was on some level a

37:08

measure of biological merit. On the left,

37:10

the justification, the reckoning took the

37:12

form of a sort of social merit,

37:14

which is to say people talked

37:16

about the disparities between ethnic minorities, the

37:19

death rates of ethnic minorities and

37:21

the poor versus, you know, white and

37:23

wealthy people and the implication there

37:25

was that society had sort of failed

37:27

those of us with the least

37:29

which I would personally very much agree

37:32

with but even there you see

37:34

a sort of story where the disease

37:36

itself is not the protagonist it's

37:38

social inequity which is the protagonist and

37:40

therefore there's some demand that we

37:42

have to do something about it on

37:45

the right there was a lot

37:47

of justification of the death toll through

37:49

talk about whether people were obese

37:51

whether they were smokers whether they had

37:53

pre existing conditions. Just a few

37:55

months ago now there was conversation on

37:58

the Senate floor in which. grandpa

38:00

said that no healthy child had ever

38:02

died of COVID. And that's not

38:04

true. But it also, the fact that

38:06

he even said it suggests something

38:08

I think quite ugly about our coping

38:11

mechanism here, whereby we tell ourselves

38:13

that if someone who was ill died,

38:15

that on some level, they don't

38:17

count. Or the person who died was

38:19

very old, that they don't count

38:21

either. It's only like the healthy middle

38:24

age people who, who who. you

38:26

know who ate well and exercised we

38:28

only really have to worry about

38:30

the risk of the disease to those

38:33

people again that's a form that's

38:35

a kind of a coping mechanism but

38:37

it draws on all of these

38:39

threads that have been you know sort

38:41

of woven into our culture over

38:43

this over these last five years and

38:46

I think we see it coming

38:48

out in. focus on sort of a

38:50

natural hierarchy, particularly on the right,

38:52

although to some extent in the center,

38:54

you know, we saw the unwinding

38:56

of affirmative action over the same period,

38:59

there's an increasing focus on IQ,

39:01

a sense that like, you know, society

39:03

could be ordered like a spreadsheet

39:05

and people's merit could be judged in

39:07

a certain order and if they

39:09

were bumped down for some reasons of,

39:12

you know, considerations of social justice,

39:14

that was a sort of an outrage.

39:16

All of these things I think

39:18

are connected to the basic lesson of

39:20

social Darwinism that the pandemic gave

39:22

to us, which is to say many

39:25

people came out of this experience

39:27

feeling like it was a sort of

39:29

a crucible in which our natural

39:31

merit was revealed or natural biological merit

39:33

was revealed and that the burdens

39:35

that were placed particularly on the meritorious

39:38

among us to protect the vulnerable.

39:40

Many Americans thought that those were simply

39:42

too much. David, talking to you

39:44

all this time, it just sounds like

39:46

that, you know, if you were

39:48

going to have to summarize all of

39:51

this in a sentence, it is

39:53

that we are all much angrier than

39:55

we were. five years ago. And

39:57

there are some justifiable reasons for this,

40:00

but we can't stay, most people

40:02

can't stay angry forever without that anger

40:04

kind of, you know, turning toxic

40:06

for them. Is there any way to

40:08

get past this anger? I do

40:10

think that there's some reason for optimism

40:13

on this front in the sense

40:15

that a lot of the transformations that

40:17

we've been talking about in this

40:19

conversation are transformations that have happened at

40:21

a relatively elite level there. The

40:23

way that the perspective of politicians and

40:26

commentators have have changed and the

40:28

sorts of people who've gained audiences on

40:30

social media have changed over this

40:32

period of time. I think there's a

40:34

lot of evidence that at the

40:36

at the level of the average American,

40:39

many of these, many of these

40:41

ugly turns have not actually happened at

40:43

least at the scale that they

40:45

might seem to have on the circus.

40:47

And what I mean by that

40:49

is, you know, American parents. are as

40:52

happy with the running of their

40:54

local public schools as they were before

40:56

the pandemic Now some people left

40:58

the public school system in response to

41:00

school closures and you know certainly

41:02

if you press them on particular points

41:05

they would say yes I wish

41:07

my schools were open sooner or my

41:09

kids got to go back into

41:11

school. But in general you have not

41:13

seen this major drop off in

41:15

support for public schools. And even though

41:18

I think that the rise of

41:20

or the growth of anti vaccine feeling

41:22

is quite scary and ugly I

41:24

think it's also important to keep in

41:27

perspective the scale of the changes

41:29

that we're talking about. You know in

41:31

2021. 95% or more of the

41:33

most vulnerable people in our society had.

41:35

This was a vaccine that was

41:37

in its own way a miracle that

41:40

had been designed in two days

41:42

after the gene home was released. It

41:44

was being manufactured in two months

41:46

after that and through clinical trials very

41:48

quickly this was the fastest vaccine

41:50

ever. And yet even though that speed

41:53

of development would understandably give a

41:55

lot of people a lot of anxiety

41:57

about taking it. 95% or more

41:59

of the most vulnerable people in our

42:01

society had gotten those shots by

42:03

the end of 2021. The uptake was

42:06

much lower among middle age people,

42:08

which is why America had a much

42:10

darker and more deadly 2021 than

42:12

most of our peers did. Actually, a

42:14

lot of those deaths were concentrated

42:16

in the middle age rather than the

42:19

old compared to the first year.

42:21

But nevertheless, you know, when you think

42:23

about it from a historical perspective,

42:25

this is a quite remarkable sign of

42:27

faith in vaccines that 95 plus

42:29

percent of the most vulnerable people elected

42:32

to take a brand new. shop

42:34

that had not been designed even a

42:36

year before to protect themselves. And

42:38

when you see the effects on other

42:40

vaccination rates, again, they're real there

42:42

and they are concerning, but we're talking

42:45

about routine vaccinations among kids dropping

42:47

from about 93% of American kids getting

42:49

routine vaccinations to about 91% of

42:51

American kids getting vaccinations now. So we

42:54

have seen in growth the amount

42:56

of people who are not getting backs.

42:58

But it's not like half the

43:00

country is sending their kids to kindergarten

43:02

without shops anymore. And you see

43:04

sort of a similar story when you

43:07

when you pull people about whether

43:09

they, you know, trusted their their local

43:11

authorities through the pandemic whether they

43:13

supported mask mandates or mask guidance whether

43:15

they supported advisories about vaccinations on

43:17

all of these points Americans actually register

43:20

relatively high levels of support for

43:22

their local authorities. There have been measurable

43:24

declines in trust. in public health

43:26

figures and doctors and nurses and pharmacists

43:28

and that's all regrettable. It's also the

43:31

case that decline and trust in

43:33

the government has been quite large over

43:35

this period and I think it's

43:37

just important to keep all of these

43:39

things in perspective and to remember

43:41

that even if the pandemic turns some

43:44

small number of Americans, turn them,

43:46

push them in a much darker, more

43:48

selfish, angrier direction, there's still a

43:50

large mass of Americans who understood and

43:52

experienced the pandemic as the real

43:54

threat it was, were relatively comfortable and

43:57

relatively happy with the way that

43:59

the country handled the threat. not now

44:01

boiling with resentment about what happened.

44:03

There are some people who are boiling

44:05

with resentment and I think that

44:07

they're shaping the sort of public narrative

44:10

and public experience and public reckoning

44:12

of COVID, but many Americans are not

44:14

feeling that way. And I hope

44:16

that, you know, I hope that those

44:19

people have their voices heard, especially

44:21

if we find ourselves in a situation,

44:23

maybe as soon as this year,

44:25

dealing with another pandemic threat. I worry.

44:27

that is the loud voices that

44:29

have already, you know, sort of established

44:32

the terms of the debate. You

44:34

know, we have more than half of

44:36

American states have passed bans against

44:38

public health officials imposing any restrictions in

44:40

the face of any new infectious

44:42

disease ever going forward. There are also

44:45

masking bans that have been implemented

44:47

in places as blue as New York

44:49

State. I think these are quite

44:51

ugly signs of the sort of the

44:53

end of public health or the

44:55

decline of public health in the aftermath

44:58

of the pandemic. But I would

45:00

like to think that especially in the

45:02

face of a new threat. that

45:04

Americans would feel the fear that they

45:06

felt in 2020 and turn back

45:08

to many of the same authorities that

45:11

they felt them. That may sound

45:13

overly polyamish, especially given everything that we've

45:15

talked about today, and I don't

45:17

mean to say that it's the whole

45:19

story, but I do think it's

45:21

important to keep in mind that it's

45:24

not every American who's boiling with

45:26

rage about what happened in 2020 or

45:28

2021. Some Americans are still dealing

45:30

with the burden. Other Americans are... angry

45:32

in the other direction angry that

45:34

we did too little to protect one

45:37

another and especially if they're Americans

45:39

who are dealing with you know long

45:41

COVID another really consequential, you know,

45:43

post acute sequela. But you know, the

45:46

story here is bigger than COVID

45:48

and bigger than its COVID aftermath. We

45:50

are living through a time of

45:52

great political turmoil in which a relatively

45:54

small group of ideologically extreme actors

45:56

are seizing control of many of the

45:59

systems of government and of society

46:01

and trying to redirect those institutions. a

46:03

quite ugly direction. COVID empowered them

46:05

to some extent, but that crusade is

46:07

bigger than the pandemic and the

46:09

pandemic aftermath. And whether they win or

46:12

not, whether they ultimately impose that

46:14

vision of doggy-dog survival on the rest

46:16

of us, is probably not so

46:18

much a matter of how we think

46:20

about COVID and how we respond

46:22

to its aftermath so much as it

46:25

is about whether we in the

46:27

face of that threat embrace, you know.

46:29

the old solidaristic values which used

46:31

to guide so many of us and

46:33

gave us a sense that we

46:35

owed one another some quite deep obligations

46:38

including the need to secure a

46:40

comfortable just equitable future in the face

46:42

of future threats both pandemic and

46:44

otherwise. David Wallace Wells is a science

46:46

writer and essayist his New York

46:48

Times opinion article was titled How COVID

46:51

Remade America. David thank you for

46:53

making time to talk. Thanks so much

46:55

for having me. It was a

46:57

great conversation and I look forward to

46:59

connecting against him. Think is distributed

47:01

by PRX, the public radio exchange. Again,

47:04

I'm Chris Boyd. Thanks for listening.

47:06

Have a great day.