What We Can’t Learn From History
Looking to the past for guidance feels natural—but this has never happened before.
Late last week I noticed a post being shared on social media, a sepia tone image of two women strolling down the street in surgical masks. The caption was a message of hope: “This is timeless… history repeats itself.” In 1869 Kathleen O’Mara wrote a beautiful poem called And the People Stayed Home, which was reprinted in 1919 to comfort those in quarantine during the Spanish flu pandemic. The poem lists all the things people did at home and how the time spent away from normal life led to new personal discoveries and healing. And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. It waxes on for several lines until reaching a glorious conclusion, And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they […] created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed. Yes, yes. This has all happened before. We are going to be alright. The catch? There was no Kathleen O’Mara—her name is Kitty O’Meara—she lives in Wisconsin and she wrote that poem just three weeks ago.
Another similar post making the rounds claims to be the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, from a letter he wrote while under quarantine in 1920. It’s hilarious and relatable—the pithy tone of the famous author recounting all the types of booze he has stockpiled for the long weeks ahead, …white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us. Like the poetry of Kitty O’Meara, this bit of satire is not even a month old, from a McSweeny’s humor column.
Of course it’s only natural—even responsible—to scan the history books for guidance in troublesome times. As the adage goes, there is “nothing new under the sun” (even if you haven’t had a dose of vitamin D since late February). If this so-called age of information has taught us anything it’s that, more often than not, someone has asked your question before, and probably found an answer—try Googling it. If we look back at history surely we will find that this has already happened. Better yet, in fact, if history has neglected to make a note of it—that means that the trouble we’re in right now must be less serious than we think. Our panic isn’t justified at all, we can relax knowing that by July we’ll have forgotten all about this.
But this hasn’t happened before. Yes, disease is nothing new, and viruses have been around since the beginnings of life on earth. Epidemics dating back millennia are well-documented. What’s new about COVID-19 is our knowledge of it—or, more precisely, our awareness of our lack of knowledge of it. Never before in history have we been so aware, minute by minute, of the goings on of the entire world. Historian Laura Spinney puts it plainly in her podcast about pandemics of the past:
“Well, I think it is different. I mean, fake news is not a new phenomenon, fake news is as old the hills. But, you know, with the advent of the internet, the speed and the volume of both information and fake information that we can transmit have just, you know, been amplified to an extraordinary level.”
Take the 1918 flu pandemic, perhaps the most oft-cited comparison to COVID-19 in popular media. Of that tendency, Spinney says, “I just don’t know why we immediately rush to pick the worst possible example.” In 1918 there was no internet and broadcast radio was in its infancy. People got almost all their information from newspapers, which came out periodically—daily if you were lucky enough to live in a city with a daily paper, weekly, or even less frequently in most other parts of the world. And then there’s the fact that in 1918 the first World War was still raging on. People didn’t have the mental energy to consider the implications of their role in a global pandemic, and media outlets were urged to avoid reporting on the flu so as to not endanger already waning morale. 1918 aside, we can look at other global health crises, like the Black Death—in the 14th century there weren’t even newspapers, and science barely existed. People didn’t even know that disease was caused by germs. Conversely, we can look more recently, to 2009 and the swine flu. In 2009, H1N1 didn’t affect more people than any usual annual flu, and was largely ignored by the media.
If historical accounts of disease can’t offer guidance, perhaps history’s response to other disasters can. The most recent comparison we can make to the global media response to COVID-19 is the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. For many alive today, that is the last time there was a global emergency of this scale that resulted in such broad-reaching social changes—grounding of aircraft, shuttering of businesses, messages from government authorities. 9/11, however, was different in key ways: we knew exactly what was happening within hours after the attack. Within days the response was clear, and efforts were launched to address our new enemy and repair the damage. Yes, the healing process was slow, but healing started right away because the disaster itself was swift. 9/11 ushered in an era of unity—COVID-19 only seems to sow more uncertainty as the days progress.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard that word more than you can stomach in the last few weeks: uncertainty. Every email, every notice on every website, every television commercial seems to start with “in these uncertain times…” And it’s totally true—these are uncertain times. We don’t know how long this will go on, we don’t know when there will be a vaccine, we don’t know when we will be able to go back to work. We just don’t know. But life is full of uncertainty, right? We don’t know a lot of things. This time, though, what we do know is exactly how much we don’t know. That is the burden of knowledge. The horrible, crushing weight of information: the more you have the more you realize how much you don’t have. There is just so much we don’t know. That has never happened before.
Historic disasters and conflicts are defined by their players. In a natural disaster there are victims and rescuers and the rest of the world looks on. In wars there are enemies and allies and the rest of the world looks on. In the most extreme wars and disasters the public might be asked to assist relief efforts, usually through funding drives or calls for volunteering resources and time. No matter what, the roles are clear and explicit. Everyone’s responsibilities are defined. This is not so in a pandemic. Today, in early April 2020, everyone on earth is a potential victim. Every person you’ve ever known or will ever meet is a potential hero. You, sitting alone at home drinking tea, thinking about going for a walk, could be an enemy or an ally. We have not begun to comprehend what this kind of pressure means. We have not yet started to process how to deal with the responsibility that comes with that level of information.
For now, the answer has been to simply shut everything down. Cancel every activity. Send everyone home. Wait. Indefinitely. Think about it: has that ever happened before? There have been isolated instances of “shelter in place” in times of war, in natural disasters, in specific locations at specific times, but never the whole world at once. Never for this long. Let that sink in. Allow yourself to experience the abject horror at the thought that this has never happened before. This has never happened before.
Yet, there is a first time for everything. In 2020 we will learn valuable lessons about how to deal with the newfound responsibilities that accompany the “always on” lifestyle. In so many ways we are in an objectively better position than we were in 1918, and that makes this both more hopeful and scarier. We know exactly what we have to do, we just don’t know how. This pandemic will not kill 50 million people because we are learning about it so much faster than we could in 1918. That is both a blessing and a huge, weighty responsibility.
Make no mistake, history will not forget COVID-19. For the rest of your life you will remember exactly where you were when you self-quarantined, just as you remember exactly where you were on when you heard the news about 9/11 or when JFK was assassinated. You will tell your children and grandchildren to wash their hands with annoying frequency. Already we are hearing about the potential for sweeping changes to social norms that may persist for the rest of time. We cannot look back to history for guidance for one simple reason: we are the history to which future generations will look. This has never happened before. But it will happen again. And next time we’ll be ready.
