Early on and throughout the pandemic, there have been lots of nice “We’re in this together“, “Humans have survived worse“-type messages of positivity mixed with advice to not watch too much news, not to think too darkly, not to worry about things beyond your control.
These mostly came from sincere places – trying to protect a sense that the world will eventually return to normal, trying to protect people’s mental health, trying to avoid mass panic which can escalate quickly.
But I also think some of these messages come from a place of naivety.
I always think of the coworker Shea had who said “I don’t like going downtown with my kids because they might see a homeless person.”
So instead of facing reality and possibly having some difficult or uncomfortable thoughts and conversations, some people would rather pretend bad things can’t happen or deny reality completely.
We do it constantly in our personal and professional lives where we analyze risk and danger – “should I get this rash looked at or wait to if goes away?”, “How much house insurance should I buy?”, “Do I hire someone to clean my gutters or climb a ladder to do it myself?”, “Should I ask that person with the face tattoo swearing loudly in the corner of the library to quiet down or call security to do it?” – so I don’t know why people wouldn’t also try to think about some of the potential negative long-term impacts of COVID-19 on our world (while also recognizing that some are more likely than others.)
For that reason, I present…
COVID-19 – WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?
(They’re numbered but in no way am I making an attempt to rank these as some may seem more or less likely to happen but if you ask the dinosaurs, I bet none of them predicted a world-ending comet hitting either!) 😉
1. Covid-19 Becomes like Influenza-1918
The world appears to (mostly) be trending in the right direction in terms of spread and deaths. Unlike 1918’s pandemic which killed millions around the world, we have better healthcare, better science, better communication technology, better social programs and many other factors that are helping keep Covid under control in a way that simply wasn’t possible in 1918. But there is the possibility that Covid could still get worse – if it mutates, if we don’t find a vaccine, if we get through the first outbreak and it comes back again as strong or stronger at some future point.
2. The United States Has Riots and Uprisings
Where I listed all the advantages that our modern society has, it’s troubling that the US lacks so many of the things the rest of the world takes for granted – free quality healthcare, strong social safety, trusted government. In a country that’s had riots for single acts of racial injustice, I’m actually sort of surprised there hasn’t been some sort of uprising from Americans who have lost so many jobs and have so few supports. (I’m not surprised that the only “uprising” is from people wanting to not be quarantined and instead, be sent back to work, whether it is safe or not. But there could easily be some cross-over between those two groups depending on how long this lasts.)
3. The United States Has a Civil War (or a Civil Divorce?)
There was already a division between blue and red states in the US that’s only gotten worse in our current hyper-partisan world. But seeing various states band together with others to form regional coalitions to coordinate their COVID responses makes me wonder if some of this could lay the groundwork for disintegration of the United States since there is already tension between blue states (who send a lot of tax money to red states) and red states (who have very different cultural values than blue states.) A related note is that states that band together could actually end up being unhelpful if say, six states decide to take steps that are ineffective rather than one state acting alone.
4. The Economy Is Permanently Altered (Destroyed or Improved Though?)
For over a century, our entire society has based on a capitalistic model of ever-increasing growth, ever-increasing wealth (especially for those at the top), and ever-increasing exploitation of our natural world to fuel all of that (which may have played a part in releasing the coronavirus on us in the first place!)
With the amount of job loss, government spending, changing tax bases, it’s impossible to see if our economy will go back to “normal” or if it will be permanently altered, either to the good or bad.
In the worst sense, you could say that bats (or pigs or ticks or gorillas) aren’t responsible for any of the viruses that plague our world – ultimately humans are and in some ways, capitalism may have brought this on us. So, there may be a positive change in the form of a permanent alteration of our economy to be less focused on accumulating wealth, appreciating workers at all levels, providing basic levels of support as a human right – wouldn’t necessarily be a bad outcome which is supposedly the theme of this list. Yes, it could be a stressful and disruptive if humanity begins to transition to a new economic model after so long in a (mostly) capitalist framework. Ultimately that would likely be a good thing but we could also go the other way with an economy that *can’t* rebound, either to the way things were or to a model of continual growth and who knows what that would end up looking like?
5. The Conspiracy Theories Take Hold
There are numerous conspiracy theories about COVID out there of varying levels of plausibility – from the idea that the virus was man-made and/or purposely released to it being spread by 5G to it being a way for elites to force us all to have implanted chips that control all of our movements (not too far from the situation in Wuhan right now actually.) I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any measure but I do find it fascinating to read about how conspiracy theories develop and what it may say about how some people process information or deal with shocking, world-altering events. To this day, there are an incredible number of people who believe that the moon landing was faked or that 9/11 was an inside job so I wonder what will happen if some of the Covid “truther” theories took hold and what impact that would have on our ability to deal with the virus going forward (as just one example, the idea of something like mandatory vaccination for Covid will be extremely controversial in a world where anti-vaxxers are plentiful.)
