On the Arrogance of Self-Entitlement during a Pandemic

In the midst of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, libertarians in San Francisco, California objected to wearing face masks. Other people there were simply fed up with wearing masks by late 1918. The libertarians, who objected on the basis of rights, actually prevented the Board of Health from renewing a mandate to wear masks.[1] In early 1919, another spike in influenza cases there led the board to put a mandate in place. So in March of 2020, the failure of mass transits and retail stores to enforce physical distancing and the failures a few months later to enforce mandates on wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus can be seen as recklessness (and fecklessness) that could have been prevented by looking back a hundred years. But could the willful disregard of store policies and local law both by customers and store managers have been prevented had business had heeded history? I contend that human nature, which had not changed in such a short time by evolutionary standards, played the heavy, or anchor.
The selfishness of business managers can be regarded as the obstacle to historical progress in dealing with pandemics. As against history and even “organizational learning,” the current profit-motive wins over managers. God forbid that a customer be offended by being confronted by a store employee for not wearing a mask even though mask-wearing was “required” not only by store policy, but also by local law! Of course, a store or business policy barring enforcement of a requirement nullifies it, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Also, allowing customers to break a local law is itself criminal, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Ignoring a company policy and even local law could somehow be justified by the interests of profit-seeking.  
The selfishness and inconsiderateness of customers came with a presumptiveness or sense of entitlement to break not only store policies but local law as well. The mantra by the individual that that individual is above store requirements and the law rings with a shallow arrogance. The presumptuousness of the weak of being self-justified brings with it a bad odor, Nietzsche would say. This pathology was especially prevalent in places such as Arizona in the United States.
According to Jeremy Brown, an expert on the 2020 pandemic, it showed how strident selfishness can be. Such selfishness, joined by the related lack of consideration and empathy for other people, was perhaps greater than expected among American business managers and customers. “I think that the message we’ve seen is that people are selfish to a remarkable degree that I don’t think we’ve seen before,” Brown said.[2] That is, the refusal of retail managers to enforce a company requirement because doing so might turn some customers away, and thus their money, is steeped in short-sighted selfishness that recognizes no business responsibility in society. Similarly, the refusal of customers to wear masks, which put other people at risk, can show us just how much of a force selfishness can have in certain people. “The selfishness of people and their inability to have empathy for others who aren’t like themselves is one of the very, very worrying aspects that the disease has highlighted, Brown suggests. “I think this is a deeply rooted part of American society.”[3]
I submit that it is a gross overgeneralization to gloss American society, as there are many, just as many exist in Europe. In having lived in several of those in America, I was stunned in 2020 by just how much aggressive selfishness and stubborn weakness I witnessed in Arizona by how people reacted to the pandemic. Many bus drivers, for instance, refused to wear masks even though they were required by company policy and the local law. Many retail stores had policies forbidding employees from even approaching customers who were not wearing masks. Many light rail, bus passengers, and store customers went maskless with impunity. Light rail security guards were not allowed even to ask passengers to put masks on, and bus drivers rarely did even though they could have at least informed violators of the company policy mandating the wearing of masks. The local police department managers unilaterally decided not to go after organizations allowing customers or riders to break the law. Apparently some laws, especially if they are important to public health, are not worth enforcing.
In short, in some places more than others, just as the extent and depth of selfishness became more apparent with the coronavirus pandemic, so too did human weakness and the related organizational corruption. That these defects had the gall to defend themselves aggressively rather than recognize themselves are faults is perhaps another stunning realization that was made possible by the coronavirus pandemic. This can easily account for the fact that lessons learned in 1918 were so easily dismissed in 2020.

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1. Kristen Rogers, “What the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Teach Us about Coronavirus,” CNN.com, September 25, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Coronavirus: Equivalence and Progress in Infectious Diseases

History forgotten is history to be repeated, for evolution occurs over such vast oceans of time that for our purposes, human biological nature is fixed. Yet history kept fresh can permit progress such that the species is better equipped to combat problems such as pandemics. At the time of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, serious comparisons to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Black Death of the fourteenth century were lacking in the American media, including by public health officials and government officials even as claims of vague equivalence were made. Such claims, I submit, were erroneous. In fact, they did more harm than good by instilling excessive fear in the population.

Hearing the coronavirus being referred to as a plague on National Public Radio in the United States, I instinctively bristled at the assumed equivalence. A plague is a contagious bacterial disease with a high mortality rate. Coronavirus is a virus rather than a bacterium. The Black Death was a plague pandemic that “devastated Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE, killing an estimated 25-30 million people.”[1]  Paris buried 800 dead each day of the peak, or apex, there. “On average 30% of the population of affected areas [in Europe] was killed, although some historians prefer a figure closer to 50%, and this was probably the case in the worst affected cities.”[2] In 2020, two months after the first recorded death from the coronavirus in Europe, 97,000 people there were dead. The global mortality rate of coronavirus as of March 3, 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), was just 3.4%, which is much closer to the 1% from seasonable flu.[3] Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic was not a plague.

The coronavirus pandemic was also publically likened to the Spanish Flu, which hit the U.S. in 1918. At least both were viruses, unlike the Plague. “The Spanish flu of 1918 lasted only a few months but took an estimated 50 million to 100 million lives around the globe, including 675,000 in the U.S.”[4] Ten days short of two months since the first death from the coronavirus in the U.S., 38,917 people were dead from the disease and less than 5% of the population had been infected. Worldwide, at least 158,000 people had died.[5] Clearly, the two pandemics were not equivalent. The assumed equivalence in the comparisons in 2020 demonstrates not only ignorance, but also a lack of interest in acquiring even a bit of historical knowledge so as to make tolerable comparisons.

In spite of historical knowledge being available and there being advances in knowledge, weaknesses of our species exerts a countervailing wind on the road of progress. The Spanish flu itself may not have been more virulent, however, because medical and public-health knowledge was so significantly less in 1918 than a century later. To put the two eras in perspective, model-T cars were on the road in 1918, whereas electric (and hybrid) cars were being driven and self-driving cars were being tested by 2020.

Parades and “other large public gatherings were common, contributing to the spread” of the Spanish Flu.[6] American governments facing the coronavirus pandemic prohibited or recommended people to maintain a physical distance from each other and stay home as much as possible (e.g. shelter-in-place orders). Retail businesses either shut voluntarily or by government order. Medically, antibiotics “to treat secondary bacterial infections that often accompany the flu had yet to be discovered” by 1918.[7] In addition to antibiotics, physicians in 2020 could put patients struggling to breath on ventilators.

It cannot be assumed, however, that people in 2020 could not have improved their chances of staying healthy by learning more about the 1918 societal protocols. During the Spanish Flu, it was thought “that keeping windows open would deter the spread.”[8] Trolley cars in Cincinnati, Ohio displayed fliers encouraging the practice, “which was utilized nationwide.”[9] In contrast, bus drivers in Phoenix, Arizona kept the bus’s narrow upper windows closed during the coronavirus pandemic a century later. Missing the larger point, the bus company’s management claimed that even open slits were unsafe because passengers could throw small objects out of the buses. Even though medical knowledge was clear that the coronavirus stays airborne relatively long due to its small size among flus and could even be transmitted by normal breathing, the bus company in the desert did not bother to read up on how trolley companied had dealt with the pandemic in 1918. Nor did the passengers figure that physical distancing applied to getting on the bus (i.e., giving deboarding passengers some space). In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

Arizona at the time had one of the worst public education systems in the U.S.; even bad judgment could be traced back to this factor. Perhaps it is too idealistic to assume that everyone can be educated enough to reason his or her way to better secure even self-interested self-preservation. Even with historical knowledge and advances thereof available, human nature presents a limit as to how much actual progress can be made against infectious diseases.

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[1] Marak Cartwright, “Black Death,” Ancient History Encyclopedia (accessed on April 18, 2020).

[2] Ibid.ev

[3] Tedros Ghebreyesus, press briefing of March 3, 2020. As Director-General, he headed the World Health Organization at the time.

[4] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,” AARP (accessed April 18, 2020).

[5] Ben Westcott et al, “Global Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 158,000,” CNN.com, April 18, 2020.

[6] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,”

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

Melting Permafrost Unleashing Killer Bacteria and Viruses: Climate Change Heats Up

As the Northern climes warm, our species may soon be vulnerable to ancient—even beyond ancient— bacteria and viruses. We are familiar with pathogens to which our species has some immunity, built up from repeated prior contact. As a species, we could lose everything from illnesses in which the modern human body has no experience and thus no built-up defenses.

Researches have encountered complex ancient viruses in the melting permafrost of Siberia. Bacteria and viruses can lie dormant in permafrost until they are reactivated by warming. Scientists have discovered intact Spanish flu viruses in corpses buried in 1918 in the Alaskan tundra. In 2016 in Siberia, 100 people and 2,300 reindeer were infected with anthrax that scientist believe had been trapped in a frozen reindeer carcass that thawed during the particularly hot summer. Unfortunately, permafrost “appears to the among the systems most vulnerable to global warming,” according to researchers in the journal Nature Climate Change.[1] Global warming in turn is vulnerable to the human production of carbon dioxide, such as from our increasing use of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Behind the economics of use or consumption is the exponential increase in the population of our species. As biological beings, we must consume. Generally speaking, the more humans around, the higher the total consumption. Distribution of resources obviously makes a difference—some people get to consume disproportionately more than others can. Even so, the staggering number of over 7 billion people must involve a considerable amount of consumption.

The extraordinary jump in human population is occurring in a very short period of time. How could there not be huge, unforeseen reverberations? 

The upshot is that Nature has its own measures to correct a species’ failure to control its numbers on a planet of finite resources. As great as the human mind is, we have trouble anticipating the secondary systems that are set in motion. Put another way, the astonishing number of 7 billion can be expected to have repercussions that get beyond our ability to anticipate, let alone manage. As permafrost that has been frozen for millennia (also a big number) melts and the methane and bacteria and viruses that have been trapped escape, we face a huge blindside. As systems effect systems effect systems, we can easily get ahead of ourselves.

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[1] Mary Papenfuss, “As Ice Melts, Dangerous Diseases From The Past Could Rise Again,” The Huffington Post, May 5, 2017.