How Covid Changed the U.S.
I just listened to a podcast on The Bulwark about how Covid changed us. And as always when I listen to the Bulwark it amazes me how they can get so many facts right and completely leave out the causes. I attribute this to some ideological differences and the resulting failure to see the forest for all the trees in the way.
Since you are here on Medium and not reading my edited articles that appear in Whowhatwhy that I get paid for, you guys get the raw stuff. And the main way Covid changed our society, is that it taught the Right wing of our leaders that government doesn’t have to do anything. And that’s resulted in the wrecking ball being taken to our institutions going by DOGE and destroying every safety net in sight.
Because over a million people died from Covid, (not counting the millions disabled by Long Covid) and there was enough apathy and right wing propaganda, that people cried out for less protections, not more.
After around two thousand people died on 9/11 the government completely revamped society (in a direction of more surveillance less freedom that it already wanted to go admittedly) in response to be more secure from terrorism. Five hundred times that many people died from Covid and our government is taking steps to make us more vulnerable to disease, not less.
When I see people posting that Universal Health Care would be cheaper and save a hundred thousand lives a year or so I think, why would anybody in power care? They already allowed a million people to die unnecessarily and there was no revolution, no uprising. Aside from one health care CEO, no one’s paid a price for mass death.
So when Elon Musk says empathy is a weakness, at least politically he’s correct. The electorate has shown no preference or demand for empathy. If anything they’ve shown a preference for sadism in their choices.
So we are changed, we are a society whose leadership gladly expends human capital, at a rate previously reserved to our new allies China and Russia. Yes, we’re now the bad guys of the world. Our true nature, ironically, unmasked by Covid.
