For many Americans right now, the scale of the coronavirus
crisis calls to mind 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—events
that reshaped society in lasting ways, from how we travel and buy
homes, to the level of security and surveillance we’re accustomed
to, and even to the language we use.
Politico Magazine surveyed more than thirty smart, macro
thinkers this week, and they have some news for you: Buckle in.
This could be bigger.
A global, novel virus that keeps us contained in our
homes—maybe for months—is already reorienting our relationship
to government, to the outside world, even to each other. Some
changes these experts expect to see in the coming months or years
might feel unfamiliar or unsettling: Will nations stay closed? Will
touch become taboo? What will become of restaurants?
But crisis moments also present opportunity: more sophisticated
and flexible use of technology, less polarization, a revived
appreciation for the outdoors and life’s other simple pleasures.
No one knows exactly what will come, but here is our best stab at a
guide to the unknown ways that society—government, healthcare,
the economy, our lifestyles and more—will change.
Community
The personal becomes dangerous.
Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown and
author, most recently, of You’re the Only One I Can Tell:
Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships.
On 9/11, Americans discovered we are vulnerable to calamities we
thought only happened in distant lands. The 2008 financial crisis
told us we also can suffer the calamities of past eras, like the
economic meltdown of the Great Depression. Now, the 1918 flu
pandemic is a sudden specter in our lives.
This loss of innocence, or complacency, is a new way of
being-in-the-world that we can expect to change our
doing-in-the-world. We know now that touching things, being with
other people and breathing the air in an enclosed space can be
risky. How quickly that awareness recedes will be different for
different people, but it can never vanish completely for anyone who
lived through this year. It could become second nature to recoil
from shaking hands or touching our faces—and we may all fall heir
to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands.
The comfort of being in the presence of others might be replaced by
a greater comfort with absence, especially with those we don’t
know intimately. Instead of asking, “Is there a reason to do this
online?” we’ll be asking, “Is there any good reason to do
this in person?”—and might need to be reminded and convinced
that there is. Unfortunately, if unintendedly, those without easy
access to broadband will be further disadvantaged. The paradox of
online communication will be ratcheted up: It creates more
distance, yes, but also more connection, as we communicate more
often with people who are physically farther and farther away—and
who feel safer to us because of that distance.
A new kind of patriotism.
Mark Lawrence Schrad is an associate professor of political science
and author of the forthcoming Smashing the Liquor Machine: A
Global History of Prohibition.
America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But you
can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against coronavirus
aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they are our
doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store clerks,
utility workers, small-business owners and employees. Like Li
Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly saddled with
unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased risk of
contamination and death they never signed up for.
When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their
sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses,
genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we
now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed health
benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and have
holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their health
and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start to
understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life of
your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s community.
Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism and love of
community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole
awful mess.
A decline in polarization.
Peter T. Coleman is a professor of psychology at Columbia
University who studies intractable conflict. His next book, The
Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, will be released
in 2021.
The extraordinary shock(s) to our system that the coronavirus
pandemic is bringing has the potential to break America out of the
50-plus year pattern of escalating political and cultural
polarization we have been trapped in, and help us to change course
toward greater national solidarity and functionality. It might
sound idealistic, but there are two reasons to think it can
happen.
The first is the “common enemy” scenario, in which people begin
to look past their differences when faced with a shared external
threat. COVID-19 is presenting us with a formidable enemy that will
not distinguish between reds and blues, and might provide us with
fusion-like energy and a singularity of purpose to help us reset
and regroup. During the Blitz, the 56-day Nazi bombing campaign
against the Britain, Winston Churchill’s cabinet was amazed and
heartened to witness the ascendance of human goodness—altruism,
compassion and generosity of spirit and action.
The second reason is the “political shock wave” scenario.
Studies have shown that strong, enduring relational patterns often
become more susceptible to change after some type of major shock
destabilizes them. This doesn’t necessarily happen right away,
but a study of 850 enduring inter-state conflicts that occurred
between 1816 to 1992 found that more than 75 percent of them ended
within 10 years of a major destabilizing shock. Societal shocks can
break different ways, making things better or worse. But given our
current levels of tension, this scenario suggests that now is the
time to begin to promote more constructive patterns in our cultural
and political discourse. The time for change is clearly
ripening.
A return to faith in serious experts.
Tom Nichols is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and author
of The Death of Expertise.
America for several years has become a fundamentally unserious
country. This is the luxury afforded us by peace, affluence and
high levels of consumer technology. We didn’t have to think about
the things that once focused our minds—nuclear war, oil
shortages, high unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates.
Terrorism has receded back to being a kind of notional threat for
which we dispatch volunteers in our military to the far corners of
the desert as the advance guard of the homeland. We even elevated a
reality TV star to the presidency as a populist attack on the
bureaucracy and expertise that makes most of the government
function on a day to day basis.
The COVID-19 crisis could change this in two ways. First, it has
already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters. It
was easy to sneer at experts until a pandemic arrived, and then
people wanted to hear from medical professionals like Anthony
Fauci. Second, it may—one might hope—return Americans to a new
seriousness, or at least move them back toward the idea that
government is a matter for serious people. The colossal failure of
the Trump administration both to keep Americans healthy and to slow
the pandemic-driven implosion of the economy might shock the public
enough back to insisting on something from government other than
emotional satisfaction.
Less individualism.
Eric Klinenberg is professor of sociology and director of the
Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the
author, most recently, of Palaces for the People: How Social
Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the
Decline of Civic Life.
The coronavirus pandemic marks the end of our romance with market
society and hyper-individualism. We could turn toward
authoritarianism. Imagine President Donald Trump trying to suspend
the November election. Consider the prospect of a military
crackdown. The dystopian scenario is real. But I believe we will go
in the other direction. We’re now seeing the market-based models
for social organization fail, catastrophically, as self-seeking
behavior (from Trump down) makes this crisis so much more dangerous
than it needed to be.
When this ends, we will reorient our politics and make substantial
new investments in public goods—for health, especially—and
public services. I don’t think we will become less communal.
Instead, we will be better able to see how our fates are linked.
The cheap burger I eat from a restaurant that denies paid sick
leave to its cashiers and kitchen staff makes me more vulnerable to
illness, as does the neighbor who refuses to stay home in a
pandemic because our public school failed to teach him science or
critical thinking skills. The economy—and the social order it
helps support—will collapse if the government doesn’t guarantee
income for the millions of workers who will lose their jobs in a
major recession or depression. Young adults will fail to launch if
government doesn’t help reduce or cancel their student debt. The
coronavirus pandemic is going to cause immense pain and suffering.
But it will force us to reconsider who we are and what we value,
and, in the long run, it could help us rediscover the better
version of ourselves.
Religious worship will look different.
Amy Sullivan is director of strategy for Vote Common Good.
We are an Easter people, many Christians are fond of saying,
emphasizing the triumph of hope and life over fear. But how do an
Easter people observe their holiest day if they cannot rejoice
together on Easter morning? How do Jews celebrate their deliverance
from bondage when Passover Seders must take place on Zoom, with
in-laws left to wonder whether Cousin Joey forgot the Four
Questions or the internet connection merely froze? Can Muslim
families celebrate Ramadan if they cannot visit local mosques for
Tarawih prayers or gather with loved ones to break the fast?
All faiths have dealt with the challenge of keeping faith alive
under the adverse conditions of war or diaspora or
persecution—but never all faiths at the same time. Religion in
the time of quarantine will challenge conceptions of what it means
to minister and to fellowship. But it will also expand the
opportunities for those who have no local congregation to sample
sermons from afar. Contemplative practices may gain popularity. And
maybe—just maybe—the culture war that has branded those who
preach about the common good with the epithet “Social Justice
Warriors” may ease amid the very present reminder of our
interconnected humanity.
New forms of reform.
Jonathan Rauch is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
One group of Americans has lived through a transformational
epidemic in recent memory: gay men. Of course, HIV/AIDS was (and
is) different in all kinds of ways from coronavirus, but one lesson
is likely to apply: Plagues drive change. Partly because our
government failed us, gay Americans mobilized to build
organizations, networks and know-how that changed our place in
society and have enduring legacies today. The epidemic also
revealed deadly flaws in the health care system, and it awakened us
to the need for the protection of marriage—revelations which led
to landmark reforms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some
analogous changes in the wake of coronavirus. People are finding
new ways to connect and support each other in adversity; they are
sure to demand major changes in the health-care system and maybe
also the government; and they’ll become newly conscious of
interdependency and community. I can’t predict the precise
effects, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing them for years.
Tech
Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor-in-chief of Reason
magazine.
COVID-19 will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to moving
more of our lives online. Not everything can become virtual, of
course. But in many areas of our lives, uptake on genuinely useful
online tools has been slowed by powerful legacy players, often
working in collaboration with overcautious bureaucrats. Medicare
allowing billing for telemedicine was a long-overdue change, for
instance, as was revisiting HIPPA to permit more medical providers
to use the same tools the rest of us use every day to communicate,
such as Skype, Facetime and email. The regulatory bureaucracy might
well have dragged its feet on this for many more years if not for
this crisis. The resistance—led by teachers’ unions and the
politicians beholden to them—to allowing partial homeschooling or
online learning for K-12 kids has been swept away by necessity. It
will be near-impossible to put that genie back in the bottle in the
fall, with many families finding that they prefer full or partial
homeschooling or online homework. For many college students,
returning to an expensive dorm room on a depopulated campus will
not be appealing, forcing massive changes in a sector that has been
ripe for innovation for a long time. And while not every job can be
done remotely, many people are learning that the difference between
having to put on a tie and commute for an hour or working
efficiently at home was always just the ability to download one or
two apps plus permission from their boss. Once companies sort out
their remote work dance steps, it will be harder—and more
expensive—to deny employees those options. In other words, it
turns out, an awful lot of meetings (and doctors’ appointments
and classes) really could have been an email. And now they will
be.
A healthier digital lifestyle.
Sherry Turkle is professor of the social studies of science and
technology at MIT, founding director of the MIT Initiative on
Technology and Self, and author, most recently, of Reclaiming
Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.
Perhaps we can use our time with our devices to rethink the kinds
of community we can create through them. In the earliest days of
our coronavirus social distancing, we have seen inspirational first
examples. Cello master Yo-Yo Ma posts a daily live concert of a
song that sustains him. Broadway diva Laura Benanti invites
performers from high school musicals who are not going to put on
those shows to send their performances to her. She’ll be
watching; Lin-Manuel Miranda joins the campaign and promises to
watch as well. Entrepreneurs offer time to listen to pitches.
Master yoga instructors teach free classes. This is a different
life on the screen from disappearing into a video game or polishing
one’s avatar. This is breaking open a medium with human
generosity and empathy. This is looking within and asking: “What
can I authentically offer? I have a life, a history. What do people
need?” If, moving forward, we apply our most human instincts to
our devices, that will have been a powerful COVID-19 legacy. Not
only alone together, but together alone.
A boon to virtual reality.
Elizabeth Bradley is president of Vassar College and a scholar of
global health.
VR allows us to have the experiences we want even if we have to be
isolated, quarantined or alone. Maybe that will be how we adapt and
stay safe in the next outbreak. I would like to see a VR program
that helped with the socialization and mental health of people who
had to self-isolate. Imagine putting on glasses, and suddenly you
are in a classroom or another communal setting, or even a positive
psychology intervention.
Health/Science
The rise of telemedicine.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is chair of the department of medical ethics and
health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The pandemic will shift the paradigm of where our healthcare
delivery takes place. For years, telemedicine has lingered on the
sidelines as a cost-controlling, high convenience system. Out of
necessity, remote office visits could skyrocket in popularity as
traditional-care settings are overwhelmed by the pandemic. There
would also be containment-related benefits to this shift; staying
home for a video call keeps you out of the transit system, out of
the waiting room and, most importantly, away from patients who need
critical care.
An opening for stronger family care.
Ai-Jen Poo is director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance
and Caring Across Generations.
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed gaping holes in our care
infrastructure, as millions of American families have been forced
to navigate this crisis without a safety net. With loved ones sick
and children suddenly home from school indefinitely, they’ve been
forced to make impossible choices among their families, their
health and financial ruin. After all, meaningful childcare
assistance is extremely limited, access to long-term care is
piecemeal at best, and too few workers have access to paid family
and medical leave, which means that missed work means missed
pay.
This crisis should unleash widespread political support for
Universal Family Care—a single public federal fund that we all
contribute to, that we all benefit from, that helps us take care of
our families while we work, from childcare and elder care to
support for people with disabilities and paid family leave.
Coronavirus has put a particular national spotlight on unmet needs
of the growing older population in our country, and the tens of
millions of overstretched family and professional caregivers they
rely on. Care is and always has been a shared responsibility. Yet,
our policy has never fully supported it. This moment, challenging
as it is, should jolt us into changing that.
Government becomes Big Pharma.
Steph Sterling is vice president of advocacy and policy at the
Roosevelt Institute, and co-author of the forthcoming paper
“In the Public Interest: Democratizing Medicines through
Public Ownership.”
The coronavirus has laid bare the failures of our costly,
inefficient, market-based system for developing, researching and
manufacturing medicines and vaccines. COVID-19 is one of several
coronavirus outbreaks we have seen over the past 20 years, yet the
logic of our current system—a range of costly government
incentives intended to stimulate private-sector development—has
resulted in the 18-month window we now anticipate before widespread
vaccine availability. Private pharmaceutical firms simply will not
prioritize a vaccine or other countermeasure for a future public
health emergency until its profitability is assured, and that is
far too late to prevent mass disruption. The reality of fragile
supply chains for active pharmaceutical ingredients coupled with
public outrage over patent abuses that limit the availability of
new treatments has led to an emerging, bipartisan consensus that
the public sector must take far more active and direct
responsibility for the development and manufacture of medicines.
That more efficient, far more resilient government approach will
replace our failed, 40-year experiment with market-based incentives
to meet essential health needs.
Science reigns again.
Sonja Trauss is executive director of YIMBY Law.
Truth and its most popular emissary, science, have been declining
in credibility for more than a generation. As Obi-Wan Kenobi told
us in Return of the Jedi, “You’re going to find that
many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of
view.” In 2005, long before Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert coined
the term “truthiness” to describe the increasingly fact-lite
political discourse. The oil and gas industry has been waging a
decades-long war against truth and science, following up on the
same effort waged by the tobacco industry. Altogether, this led to
the situation in which the Republicans could claim that the reports
about the coronavirus weren’t science at all, but mere politics,
and this sounded reasonable to millions of people. Quickly,
however, Americans are being reacquainted with scientific concepts
like germ theory and exponential growth. Unlike with tobacco use or
climate change, science doubters will be able to see the impacts of
the coronavirus immediately. At least for the next 35 years, I
think we can expect that public respect for expertise in public
health and epidemics to be at least partially restored.
Government
Congress can finally go virtual.
Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of the practice in media
arts and sciences at MIT, director of the Center for Civic Media
and author of Digital Cosmopolitans: Why We Think the Internet
Connects Us, Why It Doesn’t, and How to Rewire It.
Coronavirus is going to force many institutions to go virtual. One
that would greatly benefit from the change is the U.S. Congress. We
need Congress to continue working through this crisis, but given
advice to limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer, meeting on the
floor of the House of Representatives is not an especially wise
option right now; at least
two members of Congress already have tested positive for the
virus.
Instead, this is a great time for congresspeople to return to their
districts and start the process of virtual
legislating—permanently. Not only is this move medically
necessary at the moment, but it has ancillary benefits. Lawmakers
will be closer to the voters they represent and more likely to be
sensitive to local perspectives and issues. A virtual Congress is
harder to lobby, as the endless parties and receptions that
lobbyists throw in Washington will be harder to replicate across
the whole nation. Party conformity also might loosen with
representatives remembering local loyalties over party ties.
In the long run, a virtualized Congress might help us tackle one of
the great problems of the contemporary House of Representatives:
reapportionment and expansion. The House has not grown meaningfully
in size since the 1920s, which means that a representative, on
average, speaks for 770,000 constituents, rather than the 30,000
the Founding Fathers mandated. If we demonstrate that a virtual
Congress can do its job as well or better using 21st-century
technologies, rather than 18th-century ones, perhaps we could
return the house to the 30,000:1 ratio George Washington
prescribed.
Big government makes a comeback.
Margaret O’Mara is a professor of history at University of
Washington and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the
Remaking of America.
The battle against the coronavirus already has made
government—federal, state and local—far more visible to
Americans than it normally has been. As we tune in to daily
briefings from public health officials, listen for guidance from
our governors, and seek help and hope from our national leaders, we
are seeing the critical role that “big government” plays in our
lives and our health. We also see the deadly consequences of four
decades of disinvestment in public infrastructure and dismissal of
public expertise. Not only will America need a massive dose of big
government to get out of this crisis—as Washington’s swift
passage of a giant economic bailout package reflects—but we will
need big, and wise, government more than ever in its aftermath.
Government service regains its cachet.
Lilliana Mason is an associate professor of government and politics
at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of
Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.
The Reagan era is over. The widely accepted idea that government is
inherently bad won’t persist after coronavirus. This event is
global evidence that a functioning government is crucial for
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