Book Chapter: SURVIVING A PANDEMIC by J. Michael Ryan (Routledge, 2022)

 Important quotation:

Surviving the pandemic has been about much more than avoiding infection; it has been about maintaining life while staying alive.

 

In order to report a case “officially”, it means that one must test positive and that result be reported to an official reporting agency. This leads to all sorts of problems on obtaining accurate estimates. Experts estimate, for example, that some 30-40% of those who contract the virus will remain asymptomatic and so are unlikely to get tested and thus never have their infections officially reported.

 

The challenge of convincing people who have access to a life-saving vaccine to actually take it (and I must confess thinking of such a thing as a “challenge” is indeed, well, challenging!). Various methods have been tested including lotteries, forced mandates, not allowing entry to certain institutions, and threats of job dismissal. Those methods have, however, largely failed. Key to convincing people to get the vaccine is more likely to be a strategy of reeducation or, better phrased, simply education, and undoing the harm that has been caused by the mountains of mis- and disinformation that has been widely circulated, especially among conservatives and via conservative media.

 The challenge of convincing people who have access to a life-saving vaccine to actually take it (and I must confess thinking of such a thing as a “challenge” is indeed, well, challenging!). Various methods have been tested including lotteries, forced mandates, not allowing entry to certain institutions, and threats of job dismissal.

Conclusion:

There have also been impacts from the pandemic that are certain to impact long term chances of survival, and of the quality of that survival. As discussed above, education, medical care, and politics have already shifted. But what about the hundreds of billions of dollars in debt incurred as a result of the pandemic? And the hundreds of billions in profits? What about the reversed trends in terms of closing inequality gaps related to education, gender, sexuality, and medical access? What about the long-term environmental impacts, an area that many have argued was at the root of the viral outbreak and that is likely to lead to more new viruses entering the human population in the future? These questions have yet to be answered. The key to future survival will be to not simply ignore them.