Appropriate Emotions In A Time Of Pandemic And Riots

The year 2020 to date has certainly brought more than its share of bad news. First was the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to government ordered lockdowns, steep forced business contraction, and 20 or so million people suddenly unemployed. Then, just as things started to reopen a little, we had the death of George Floyd on May 25, followed by widespread violent “demonstrations” (aka riots) that continue even today, more than two months later, in cities like Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Chicago; San Francisco; Denver; and several others.

So how should a respectable member of society be feeling about these things?

This is another one of those many issues on which Americans divide sharply into two camps. And of course, I find myself yet again on the opposite side from respectable opinion.

For the respectable opinion side of things, I turn today to Peggy Noonan’s weekly column, appearing in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal under the headline “America Is a Coalition of the Worried.” You likely recognize Noonan as someone who first made her name in the 1980s as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, and since then has been a prolific author of books and newspaper columns from what they call a “center-right” perspective. She certainly is not a crazed progressive nut case. On the other hand, as a certified member of the elite and as an establishment Republican, she just can’t shake off that deep need to see the government solve all human problems and take care of all downside risk of life.

So, Peggy, how should we be feeling in these fraught times? Noonan’s answer is that we should be worried — very, very worried:

People who haven’t worried in years are worried, and it’s not about regular things, it’s about big and essential things. It’s a whole other order of anxiety. That’s all this is about. How anxious everyone is, and how deep down they know they’re going to be anxious for a long time. . . . And so the mood this charged summer of ’20: Everyone’s scared, everyone’s trying to figure out where safety is, everyone’s afraid of making a mistake.

The causes are the pandemic and the ongoing chaos in major cities. On the pandemic:

We’re in the middle (perhaps—nobody knows) of a world-wide pandemic, a historic occurrence that for everyone alive has been without precedent. We are in the middle (perhaps—nobody knows) of a severe economic contraction that looks likely to produce a long recession. We’ve experienced a national economic shutdown, again without precedent. 

And on the urban chaos:

Everyone is worried about the future of the big cities. Crime, protests, the feeling nobody’s in charge. . . . When you return to the city in the fall, what will you be returning to?  You’re thinking: Do we want to live there, should we live there, should we live someplace else? What you’re really asking is: Will the city hold?

OK then, that’s one take. Here’s a different take. I think that we should all calm down, put these things in some perspective, and do the best we can to go about our regular lives and enjoy ourselves. Life is short. We are all going to die. We have a limited amount of time to enjoy our lives. We should get to it.

Consider the coronavirus. Noonan calls it a “historic occurrence” and “without precedent” in anyone’s lifetime. If the criterion is severity of the pandemic or likelihood of death from the disease, this disease is not unprecedented at all — and not even within my own lifetime. In 1968-69 we had the so-called Hong Kong flu. Look up how many people died of it, and you will find a figure of “approximately” 100,000. They didn’t even try to keep exact track of the figure; but of course the seeming precision of today’s number is an illusion anyway. The 100,000 may sound like a lot fewer than the recent Covid-19 numbers, but remember that the U.S. population was much smaller — under 200 million, compared to today’s 331 million. Gross up the 100,000 figure for today’s larger population, and you would have had about 165,000 deaths, which is approximately the same as the worldometers site is reporting today as the number of U.S. deaths in the current pandemic. Then there was the so-called Asian flu of 1957-58. U.S. mortality for that one is given at about 70,000, but this time with a population of only 172 million. Grossed up for today’s population would give close to 140,000 deaths.

What was different about the Asian flu and Hong Kong flu pandemics was not the severity of the disease or likelihood of death, but that governments and bureaucrats had not taken on the arrogance of power to think that they could make the disease go away by scaring everybody out of their wits and locking down the economy and throwing millions of people out of work. We went about our lives as normal. People went to work. Children went to school. Social events and plays and concerts continued. Indeed, the Woodstock festival was in 1968, just as the Hong Kong flu epidemic was cranking up.

And then we have the riots of 2020. In case you haven’t noticed, let me state the obvious: these are entirely a phenomenon of a small number of cities with the most “progressive” left-wing governments. In these places, it has become trendy to believe that police are no longer necessary, and that criminality will go away if we just ask everyone to be nice to each other, and turn control over to people who hate America and hate the freedom-based economic system. Somehow these ignorant rioters have never learned nor noticed that it was the freedom-based economic system that caused these cities to grow up in the first place.

So should we be “worried” about the future of our big cities? I for one would miss them if they allow themselves to be destroyed; but I’m not “worried” about it. If they destroy themselves with stupid progressive policies, it’s their own problem. I’ll find somewhere else to live, and some other way to enjoy myself. I hope you will too.

The one legitimate thing we do have to worry about is that the progressives will take over all branches of the federal government and impose on the whole country the idiocy that now reigns only in certain states and cities. I’m optimistic that that won’t happen.