Post-Pandemic Times After the Lock-down Ends

I’m sending this off Friday 3/27 to the usual op-ed outlets. Comments would be most appreciated (wcalvin@uw.edu).

Post-pandemic times will feel like a new era, once we can rub shoulders again. Relief, yes—but the world will also work differently after such a sudden shock to our way of life.

The world of work will have seen what large-scale telecommuting can do (and cannot do). Businesses that succeeded with work-from-home will discover that they don’t need as much office space. Finding a parking space might become easier. We might have less cross-town traffic congestion because so many people became accustomed to on-line grocery shopping with delivery. Many pharmacies will continue to deliver. On the other hand, a reluctance to ride crowded public transit may carry over into post-pandemic times.

My home office near downtown Seattle is surrounded by four tower cranes, busy blocking our views with one floor higher each week. Will their financing disappear, causing the apartment buildings to be topped out at half height? To the extent that the elderly die or end up in skilled nursing and assisted living from Covid-19, a lot of existing apartments may open up. Suburban homes, not so much.

When the lockdown ends, we will take stock. At one level, there will be Congressional investigations about the screwup at the top concerning such essentials as ventilators and nCoV test kits. Ten weeks, frittered away, compared to South Korea—which listened to its scientists and acted promptly.

But at a more meta level, we will be taking stock of what we should expect government to do. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Will America finally adopt a European or Canadian model for paying for medical care? Or provide a guaranteed annual income that can end homelessness? Abolish the need for student loans? We will have seen government actions in each of those areas during the pandemic crisis; will they be carried over into post-pandemic times?

Then there is the economy and taxation. Were measures “Too little, too late?” Each time that I have met an economist, I have asked if there was such a subspecialty as emergency economics. “You know, like the price management during World War Two that John Kenneth Galbraith ran.” I’ve yet to hear of anyone studying the subject. In post-pandemic times, we will be debating how much to keep of the emergency economic innovations.

In what ways will the political scene change? Many communities will permanently adopt vote-by-mail, if the pandemic lasts long enough for them to experience what Washington State has been doing for many years. The budget-cutting, small-government-is-better types will have their past statements thrown back at them, in light of the consequences. Their opponents will run ads on the “penny wise, pound foolish” theme. Or maybe “Asleep at the wheel.” I think that we will see more Congressional retirements. Their replacements will likely favor a more activist government that spends more on prevention and on staying prepared for sudden hits.

I hope that our experience critiquing the government’s pandemic performance will carry over into promoting effective government action against climate change. If we are to successfully stave off climate disasters, it will require the same large-scale government coordination and prodding. The needed public support might be coming, concern carried over from the pandemic experience.

While some aspects of the new climate arrive slowly, mega heat waves can appear as suddenly as a new virus and overload hospitals just as badly. The one in Europe in 2003 killed 70,000 people; the Russian one in 2010 killed 56,000 people. The heat also ruined nearly a third of the Russian grain crop, usually exported. When winter arrived, the shortage triggered bread riots all around the Mediterranean; it’s what we remember as the “Arab Spring Uprisings.”

Are we preparing for an “American Mega”? Not obviously, and our sluggish response to the pandemic suggests that we will do poorly when a mega hits. What would soften the blow is more vigorous governmental leadership beforehand.

William H. Calvin, Ph.D., is the president of CO2Foundation.org and a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Forthcoming is his seventeenth book, “Extreme weather and what to do about it.”

Address: 725 9^th Ave #2605, Seattle WA 98104, 206.328.1192, wcalvin@uw.edu, WilliamCalvin.org

 700 words