Coronavirus: The mismanaged pandemic is triggering an avalanche

David Leonhardt, who writes The Morning newsletter for the New York Times, addressed the issue of pundit accountability by evaluating various conclusions he'd reached about American politics.  I was grateful to read this, as I have been evaluating my own thinking about the pandemic, shifting from a model of managed retreat to one of cascading disasters. 

At the beginning of all this, I thought of  "managed retreat" as a several-month process of "flattening the curve" then re-emerging having limited death and illness, preserved much of what we had and ready to rebuild. 

Instead of giving the novel coronavirus a one-two punch, our society was ambivalent about both managing and retreating.  As a result, we've triggered an avalanche of social disintegration. We've lost a massive number of jobs, businesses, gathering places, and social supports that could be rebuilt with a Marshall plan, but how would we get through Congress?

As a physician, I must say that it has been torture (I mean that pretty literally) to watch the way the pandemic has been mismanaged.  I have had to change my mind: it's not a months-long process from which we will bounce back, but a years -- maybe decades -- long catastrophe that will cause profound suffering that will only end when people rise up in disgust and say "enough."