Jerry Regovoy, born in 1930, was an American songwriter and record producer. He wrote “Piece of My Heart”, associated with Janis Joplin, but he’s probably better known for “Time Is on My Side”, made famous by The Rolling Stones in 1964. Jerry died in 2011 following a stroke. I like the way Mick Jagger did that song--his characteristic swagger, his surety that things would come his way if he just waited.
Like everyone else, I’m
preoccupied with the 2019-nCoV pandemic. This latest version of a class of viruses known as
coronaviruses, which I’m going to call covid-19, seems to be highly contagious,
and it’s nasty in other ways. Except for the priapic young men and
aphroditic sex objects on Florida’s beaches, we’re avoiding close social
contacts and taking other precautionary measures. It’s no fun, really.
I’m not a fearful person, but I accept the prevailing medical advice: the
temporal development of this infection is such that we are in for a rough
period. The federal government seems to be finally beginning to do what it must
to slow the spread of the infection, hoping to avoid a disastrous run on
medical capacities, of both people and stuff. But the hourly totals of the
infected tell a grim tale. Time is not on our side, Mick.
The enormous attention
given to this pandemic has convinced everyone that the sooner we act, the
greater our chances for mitigation. This is true for individuals, organizations
and governments alike. Everyone needs to buy-in. The rate at which
essential domestic products evaporate
from grocery store shelves is stark evidence that the media have the capacity
to get peoples’ attention and stimulate action. Individuals are more likely to
act if they feel they can do something concrete that makes a difference,
especially when it affects them personally. It’s hard, though, when it means
you should do next to nothing.
The almost universal
preoccupation with the pandemic can't be ascribed merely to the heavy media
coverage. Pandemics are spooky, and rightly so. You just don’t see it
coming. A tiny number of infectious virus units manage to infect one luckless
person in a population. The virus begins with a stealth approach, multiplying
slowly at first, not making a fuss. Then, at a certain point in its exponential
growth in the victim, the infection suddenly announces itself with a roar and
spreads at a mad rate. Meantime, the infected person is unwittingly
distributing copies of the virus to the outside world, like mail addressed to
“whomever”. A lot of biology is going on and we don’t see or feel
it. If only we could detect an infection
early and take steps to curtail the spread--tests, anyone?
For most of us, right
now it’s a matter of self-protection, anything from obsessive hand-washing to
social distancing, to prevent contact with the virus, Individuals
take steps in their self-interest, but in taking them cooperatively we can hope
to slow the virus’s spread, and maybe also reduce the total number infected.
Time is not on our side, either as individuals or as a community, so we do what
we can, now.
It’s not unreasonable to
be fearful of what might be in store for the spread of covid-19, or for the
mortalities it will produce. It seems still early to make more than a
rough guess at how virulent this nemesis will prove to be. Different
populations will exhibit differing mortality rates, depending on age
distribution, general state of health, availability of medical care and so
on. However, the preliminary estimates based on moralities in nations
that have been hard hit are ominously high.
Wikipedia has a table showing the numbers of cases and deaths worldwide,
nation by nation. The total number of
confirmed cases across all nations as of March 21, 2020, is 282,000, resulting
in about 12,000 deaths. That works out to a mortality rate of about 0.04,
a truly horrible number. The vast
majority of those deaths have occurred in China, Italy and Iran, in that
order.
To put those numbers
into perspective, consider the famous Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. With
the exception of the Black Plague in the 14th century and beyond, it was the
most deadly infestation in human history. It infected 500 million and killed an
estimated 17 to 50 million people worldwide. If we take the lowest
estimate of deaths, that amounts to an overall 0.035 mortality rate. Is it
possible that we now face something with that power to kill? We can see from the numbers that we’re in the
very early stages of the current pandemic; we can hope that mortality rates
will decline as nations come to grips with containment measures such as social
distancing. On the other hand, when covid-19 makes its way into highly
populated population centers, many of them with only the most basic and limited
medical facilities--well, it will not be pretty. In 1918 the world population
was about 1.8 billion; today we’re about 7.7
billion.
I’ve been writing this
blog for the past couple of years and attempting in various other ways to raise
awareness of the dangers posed by climate change. Scientists with many
different special skills, working with different tools and models, have been
steadily building a model of the global climate system. The myriad of studies,
coming from all parts of Earth’s environment: land surface, atmosphere and the
ocean, all point to a global warming in full swing and growing faster with each
passing year. Nearly all scientific experts are confident that the changes to
come will cause the extinction of many of the planet’s species and lead to the
widespread suffering of humans. The science has grown increasingly clear and
more precise over time. And yet, societal responses have
been slow, not even close to matching the urgency we should be
feeling.
Why is it that we can
really get going on an urgent crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic and at the
same time be slow to react to the threats of climate change? The answer
lies in our evolutionary heritage, which has endowed us with a capacity to
respond to immediate threats to ourselves or the communities in which we live.
The spectacle of heavily clad medical workers moving infected patients into
special isolation units, hourly updates on those infected or dead, the
need for self-isolation, governmental mandates to close down commerce, and the
endless drum of media coverage are enough to provoke us into action to ward off
an invisible viral infection that can kill within a few weeks of infection. In
contrast, our attention is drawn to climate change via stories about faraway
places: floods in Nebraska, drought in Ethiopia, a hurricane of unprecedented
fury hitting Japan. The climate crisis announces itself in bits and
pieces, in slowly deteriorating weather conditions in California, drought on
the Australian subcontinent, in the loss of Solomon Island nations to sea-level
rise. By comparison with a viral
pandemic, climate change is slow. As Lise Van Susteren wrote recently, “The
climate crisis is much more psychologically demanding. ... It requires
compassion to imagine what is going to be down the road and to drive ourselves
to take action now for the benefits that we may not personally receive.”
But focusing on the
notion that humans are not programmed to think long-term misses the most
important causes of our responses as a nation to the covid-19 pandemic and
global warming: the growth of global neoliberalism, an economic model that aims
to pare away unwanted governmental oversight and regulation to make way for an
unfettered capitalism operating largely free of governmental control. Many
economists have been warning over the past few decades about the rise of
neoliberalism. I recall reading a book by Dan Shiller, Digital Capitalism,
copyright 2000, in which the development of global networks is linked to
neoliberalism. Shiller’s warnings and those of many of the world’s most
eminent economists, have not been heeded. It can fairly be said that
Because capitalism works
on the notion of maximizing profits, it’s about driving down costs. The
American and global economies undergo periodic crises arising from greedy
reaching that goes astray for any number of reasons. Here’s Stiglitz
again: “Indeed, research in behavioral economics has shown that
bankers, particularly traders and investment bankers, tend to be less honest
than their colleagues in less competitive areas of finance; they become even less honest when they
are primed to think of themselves as bankers. Behavioral research has also identified why economies with
extreme levels of inequality have deficient social
solidarity.”
Because we have been
operating in an economic system grounded in the philosophy of maximizing
profits and minimizing contributions to the common good, we find ourselves with
a government unprepared for the covid-19 emergency we face. The Trump
administration, following the edicts of greedy capitalism, has systematically
stripped the agencies in the executive branch of many offices and programs, such
as the White
House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. There’s been no
one there to point out our vulnerability to a pandemic, nor were any of the
many unqualified political appointees put in charge of major agencies inclined
to think in those terms. The president often replies to questions about how his
domain is run with the claim that, “I don’t know anything about that”.
Sadly, it usually seems to be true.
The twin challenges of
the viral pandemic and impending climate change call for a time of
truth-telling. We will be hearing and reading a lot of it from sources that
have been pretty quiet heretofore. Here’s a recent example from Peter
Georgescu, writing in Forbes magazine:
“Economically, we are
not one nation. And this pandemic is screaming at us to recognize this truth
and act accordingly. If we are willfully denying or flat out ignoring the
existential problem of inequality we now face, how are we going to demand the
actions necessary to preserve our democracy and any sense of justice?”
Amen. At the
moment all is focused on how the viral pandemic has highlighted the cracks in
our social structure. The focus on short-term profits and marginalization
of the public good, will continue to be stumbling blocks as we confront climate
change. As it bears down on us in the decades to come, who will suffer the most?
To end on the question
of how we use our time in the days ahead, here are a few lines from a spiritual, Ain’t Got Time to Die, by
the African-American choir director and composer,
Hall Johnson:
Aint
got time
Cause
when Im healin de sick
When
Im healin de sick
When
Im healin de sick
Cause
it takes all o ma time
All
o ma time
