My real answer to what went wrong is that our civilization is profoundly inadequate. We have lost our ability to do things.
Civilization is made of people, and people aren’t wired for scale. We haven’t lost our ability to do things, we never had it. We have only ever done things at scale by accident, or for short periods of time (mostly wars and the Space Race).
When you live in a village of ~100 people, either you figure out norms for drought/famine/disease/etc quickly, or >90% of your community dies and the rest scatter.
In major cities, it’s fundamentally an issue of everyone-for-themselves. You walk down the street and see a bunch of strangers. You may wish they were wearing masks, but there’s no social norm. The norms are enforced at shops, waiting in line, entering with reduced capacity, wearing a mask (or not) in both cases.
If not enough people care on average, your friendly neighborhood megalopolis is doomed.
Agree that we aren’t wired for scale. Disagree that we haven’t lost the ability to do things. However, eradicate COVID-19 was not something we ever had the ability to do—certainly not in the U.S.--I suspect that places like New Zealand will eventually be forced to open up out of desperation, as no miracle cure with be forthcoming, though I hope I’m wrong on that. But it was certainly a huge gamble for the countries that have sealed their borders and gone for eradication, and I totally disagree with the judgment that it was obviously the right move, though it might turn out to be.
I’m looking forward to the simulacra post, because I do agree that we’ve gotten to the point of denying the existence of the object level and that it is incredibly disturbing and unsustainable. Were this not the case, we would have handled COVID-19 much more sensibly, but we would not have contained it. I’m very confident of this. Humans have never tolerated or been able to plan for the kind of restrictions it would require, and it is likely literally impossible anyway—the economic and social dysfunction will probably render it unsupportable before we got a miracle cure, if that ever happens. (I use the term miracle cure instead of vaccine because I’m thinking of a vaccine that we get within a few years, that we are confident doesn’t have major side effects and is widely effective, that we are able to mass produce and distribute at sufficient numbers to basically eradicate the illness worldwide, that would provide fairly long-lasting immunity, etc.---a truly effective vaccine that we actually are able to somehow give to huge numbers of people, including those hard to find and resistant to being vaccinated. This is a much taller order than “a vaccine.”)
Civilization is made of people, and people aren’t wired for scale. We haven’t lost our ability to do things, we never had it. We have only ever done things at scale by accident, or for short periods of time (mostly wars and the Space Race).
When you live in a village of ~100 people, either you figure out norms for drought/famine/disease/etc quickly, or >90% of your community dies and the rest scatter.
In major cities, it’s fundamentally an issue of everyone-for-themselves. You walk down the street and see a bunch of strangers. You may wish they were wearing masks, but there’s no social norm. The norms are enforced at shops, waiting in line, entering with reduced capacity, wearing a mask (or not) in both cases.
If not enough people care on average, your friendly neighborhood megalopolis is doomed.
Agree that we aren’t wired for scale. Disagree that we haven’t lost the ability to do things. However, eradicate COVID-19 was not something we ever had the ability to do—certainly not in the U.S.--I suspect that places like New Zealand will eventually be forced to open up out of desperation, as no miracle cure with be forthcoming, though I hope I’m wrong on that. But it was certainly a huge gamble for the countries that have sealed their borders and gone for eradication, and I totally disagree with the judgment that it was obviously the right move, though it might turn out to be.
I’m looking forward to the simulacra post, because I do agree that we’ve gotten to the point of denying the existence of the object level and that it is incredibly disturbing and unsustainable. Were this not the case, we would have handled COVID-19 much more sensibly, but we would not have contained it. I’m very confident of this. Humans have never tolerated or been able to plan for the kind of restrictions it would require, and it is likely literally impossible anyway—the economic and social dysfunction will probably render it unsupportable before we got a miracle cure, if that ever happens. (I use the term miracle cure instead of vaccine because I’m thinking of a vaccine that we get within a few years, that we are confident doesn’t have major side effects and is widely effective, that we are able to mass produce and distribute at sufficient numbers to basically eradicate the illness worldwide, that would provide fairly long-lasting immunity, etc.---a truly effective vaccine that we actually are able to somehow give to huge numbers of people, including those hard to find and resistant to being vaccinated. This is a much taller order than “a vaccine.”)