CV Diary 27: What we learned here

One of the things I really like about mentoring is the opportunity to redeem myself, at least partially, for some of my dumbest mistakes. I can’t go back and make better choices, of course, but maybe I can help someone else avoid the stupid choices that still make me cringe.

I wonder if we can do the same thing for ourselves as we look back at the last two years of pandemic mistakes, misperceptions and mischaracterizations. Maybe we need to mentor ourselves about all the ways we blew it and how we can avoid those mistakes in the future. For instance…

1. We’re too damned smug to admit it, even to ourselves, but we don’t know what would have happened if we did things differently.  No worries, though. We can always find a friend who will tell us exactly how things would have turned out if we had only done it their way. Just a thought here, but a little humility would be nice for a change.
   
   
2. There is a legitimate conversation to be had about the value of quarantines and shutdowns, along with the costs of pursuing “herd immunity.” We do know that we had more deaths per capita than almost every other country in the world, despite having more and better vaccines, faster, than almost anyone. Some things are obvious, including the reality that higher vaccination rates would have prevented more—but not all—deaths. Other things are not as certain, including the tradeoff between quarantines and economic activity in various states.
   
   
3. We demand perfection from everyone, or at least everyone else. If a vaccine isn’t 100% effective, it’s useless. If a gathering leads to a single infection, it needs to be outlawed. If an official makes a single mistake, they must die. There are a lot more than 50 shades of gray in the world, but we have a really annoying habit of seeing everything in black and white.
   
   
4. Speaking of which, we apparently think the President is God. We think he has the absolute power to stop inflation, fix the supply chain, reverse the trade deficit and repair that dripping faucet in the kitchen…if only he had the courage or the smarts or the right party identification.
   
   
5. Our worlds are smaller than two years ago, and they're going to get even smaller if we don’t reverse the trend. Most of us have spent more time with fewer people over the past two years, both online and IRL, and our echo chambers will keep getting smaller as we reconnect in person with our favored few. All of us need to expand our networks, and expose ourselves to new or contrary ideas. Think of it as building herd immunity against stupidity.
   
   
6. I know a guy who absolutely needs to be outraged. Okay, I don’t know him all that well, so maybe I am reading this wrong, but it seems from everything I see that he looks for things to make him angry. He’s not alone, of course, and I find it puzzling. What’s the benefit from all that anger? What hole is that filling in his life? And why do so many people these days appear to have the same addiction? It’s been really, really prevalent during Covid, but I don’t expect it to subside as the restrictions and cases retreat.
   
   
7. For a nation that lost an extra million people over the past two years, we aren’t seeing a whole lot of mourning going on. Some days, the death notices in my paper take up as much space as the sports section, but I don’t think I have ever seen anyone on social media mourning for these people. Yes, they post statistics about the carnage, but I’m not seeing a ton of real empathy.
   
   
8. Congress has decided to appoint a commission to review our response to the pandemic and learn lessons that we can apply in the next crisis. We hereby predict that we will find all kinds of missteps, that cable news shows will highlight the ones that cast the opposing tribe in the worst light, and we will apply none of these lessons the next time we have a crisis.

 
After two full years of this series, this is the last of the Covid Diary entries. What will we fixate on next? Click here to subscribe and you’ll be amazed at what happens.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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