The COVID-19 pandemic has generated tragedy in at least four ways.
The first and most obvious tragedy is the loss of human lives. The confirmed global death toll of 6 million grossly undercounts excess deaths. Sadly, the United States accounts for nearly 1 million confirmed deaths, the largest total in the world. Colorado has reported about 12,000, of which 175 have occurred in Southwest Colorado, mostly in La Plata and Montezuma counties.
The second tragedy is social. Considering millions of deaths numbs our emotional response. Not so, the experience of losses in our own families and social circles. Moreover, the pandemic mostly deprived us of the normal ceremonies of communal mourning, both for COVID-19 victims and for others, as well as curtailing joyous celebrations of marriages, birthdays and holiday parties.
This disruption and others have led to widespread depression, which a social worker friend diagnosed as grief that we all feel at some level. Such broadly experienced emotional stress has created a mental-health crisis alongside the physical one, manifesting in increased rates of suicides and crimes.
The third tragedy is economic, the loss of livelihoods. Cold economic analyses yield dollar costs in the tens (U.S.) to hundreds (global) of trillions – that’s tens to hundreds of million millions. Such estimates include evaluation of the loss of individual lives, plus the costs of medical care – ballpark hospitalization costs in the United States are about $100,000 per person – and lost economic output because of illnesses, lockdowns and supply-chain disruptions.
The pandemic disrupted workplaces and livelihoods, in addition to schools. Massive public spending to support struggling businesses and extending unemployment benefits moderated the impact for many but not all businesses and individuals, concurrently reducing poverty levels. Local negative impacts included business closures and curtailments, especially in the hospitality and retail industries. Examples abound, but deep Irish roots prompt me to see the loss of the Irish Embassy Pub as symbolic of this broad dimension of economic upheaval.
In the United States and other high-income countries, government funding has socialized most pandemic health care costs. However, waning subsidies for many Americans now promise reinforcement of health care stratification by income that existed before and into the pandemic. Differential economic recovery between high-income countries and low- and middle-income nations – that, for example, have been at the short end of the vaccine supply chain – likewise has exacerbated global inequality.
The final tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is political. The assault of COVID-19 on society resembled an act of aggression, but in this case by an invisible enemy. Because pre-vaccine infections threatened the function of the health care system, public health measures claimed early priority, leading to economic lockdowns. However, mounting economic losses immediately created counterpressure to reopen society. Unfortunately, rather than finding common purpose in surviving the COVID-19 “war” by balancing health and economic impacts, public debate polarized across existing political fissures.
In 2022, we do have cause for grief. We all have lost loved ones or friends. We have lost social interactions we used to consider normal. We have suffered economic losses and continued challenges, such as COVID-19-related inflation. And we have become more divided than ever.
The pandemic still has not run its course. Could we acknowledge that the first three tragedies have impacted all of us? Could we use that as common ground to approach the ongoing challenges as an opportunity to mitigate the fourth tragedy though a healing dialogue? Could we listen to one another to understand the values that prompt us to prioritize lives over livelihoods or rights over responsibilities? Could we then work to find agreements that seek to meet everyone’s needs while compromising on our wants?
Dick White is a former two-term City Council member and served as mayor of Durango.
