Coronavirus lessons

By Bernard Rowan

It's time to draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. No, it's not over. Yes, a resurgence may occur. Different situations obtain in different places. However, I think it's none too soon to sketch a few hazarded guesses about what we've learned or should learn from this experience. Some of the lessons draw from South Korea's path of progress in beating back this viral menace.

First, we've grown used to wars, national security, defense establishments, and facing threats. Military threats aren't the only or primary threats to the national interest. Mass infections threaten life fundamentally, like war. We should fight them like wars. Counterforce and counter-value apply when fighting COVID-19. Countries that mobilized their national defense apparatuses often found themselves inadequate to the task. Some countries, noticeably the U.S., failed to do enough under the guise of this 21st century global war. Slow, late, and without the same punch for mobilization that fighting the Chinese, Al Qaeda, Soviets, Russians, or Nazis featured.

We're less able to ramp up medical and public health research and disease prevention efforts than military or intelligence threats. We should review the tremendous investments made in surveillance and military technologies following 9/11. Will we do so much for this war? We can't think of preventing global and national pandemics as second priorities.

Second, in many places, the national infrastructure for domestic disasters is fundamentally lagging. It's fashionable, and not just in Euro-American quarters, to decry “big government” and to want more local control. Nowadays everyone cries for Daddy in a disaster. Provincial, state, and local authorities posture with the rhetoric of shame hidden as blame. If there are lessons for national security, there are lessons for provincial, state, and local security. Our sub-national levels of government and public administration for health are woefully inadequate. Many countries have found in this time new needs for infrastructure development, or neglected infrastructures in need of 21st century overhauls. It's expensive. We should've saved many more lives.

Third, we see the lesser results of unbridled enthusiasm for global supply chains and for not-so-hidden monopolies. When a nation's meat supply is beholden to one or two producers, or when ventilators and masks needed for life depend on distant proto-enemies (or proto-allies), we've gone far too far. The economics of comparative advantage still make sense, but there are limits. Similarly, many countries trust food, medical, energy and other critical supplies to a small group of mega-producers. Believers in competition should take pause. The faces of monopsony, oligopoly, and related threats abound in advanced economies and need reform.

South Korea experienced less of these problems because the society benefits from its political history and sage public administration. The country is a democracy, but it's a unitary government with less addiction to personal liberty. Liberty has its place, but it isn't allowed to inhibit emergency actions in war and the conduct of war to save lives, property, and liberty. South Korea effectively mobilized her military, police, medical and civilian offices to combat the illness with identification, quarantining, treatment and tracking of spread and its causes. Citizens had to follow relevant laws or face consequences. It doesn't need to be as extreme as Chinese methods either.

This points to a fourth lesson. Liberty never was and isn't an infinite or unqualified value. Limits on liberty should occur to preserve it, and to prevent harm to others. We must also remain vigilant to totalitarian, fascist, or slave-molding societies and their technologies of anti-freedom. However, COVID-19 shows the need to limit personal freedom to preserve life and aid in combatting public health wars.

Finally, I think we learn to remember the precious and fragile balance of life on Earth. It's not just caused by knowing certain sizes of asteroid could destroy the planet. It's not just caused by the threat of nuclear and conventional holocausts, which never ended, and now feature more prominently again. It's caused by human public health disasters, wars, and pandemics. Humanity cannot control nature, but it's doomed and blessed to try and lessen its negative possibilities. To preserve life, liberty, and property for this generation and the next several, we need to do better, much better. What are the lessons of the coronavirus pandemic?

Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.