Prepare for herd immunity and pray you’re not culled.
Here is the warning I issued in “Fighting This Coronavirus Is Setting an Untenable Precedent” on March 31:
Politicians and experts alike seem so fixated on fulfilling their own doomsday prophecies, they seem oblivious to the obvious question: What happens next time? …
The question is, are we dimwittingly committing ourselves henceforth to fighting pandemics the way we’re fighting this one — with all of the opportunity costs and collateral damage that would entail each time [from worldwide lockdowns]?
It took reporters long enough, but The Washington Post finally posed this obvious question on Monday to Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sure enough, the warning Dr. Redfield issued had politicians and experts alike flapping over all media like chickens with their heads chopped off.
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, [Redfield] warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.
‘There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through. … And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.
Dr. Redfield’s now headless, heedless, Chicken-Little colleagues may not understand. But I do.
Meanwhile, everyone, including Redfield, is hoping against hope that a Covid-19 vaccine will prove a panacea. And you can be sure this scientific pursuit is aimed more at making money than saving lives. But even the most optimistic prospects do not anticipate having one available for this fall.
Moreover, I have taken pains to point out that, just as a flu vaccine has not prevented tens of thousands from dying each year, a Covid-19 vaccine won’t either. And the experts keep telling us that this coronavirus is at least ten times deadlier than the flu.
Therefore, you’d be well advised to use this time to prepare yourself for our brave new world. Because, even if intermittent lockdowns loom, the new normal will surely feature some surreal social-distancing measures. This, for example, because coughing (in public) will be more taboo than farting; shaking hands more taboo than picking noses.
God help us.
[Note: That’s Doctor Robert Redfield; not to be confused with actor Robert Redford.]
Related commentaries:
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