Was it the Virus, or "Our Response to It"

A Simple Act of Verbal Pedantry

I listen to a lot of chatter these days about discussing whether our society was capable of learning from the last year of missteps regarding Covid. I'd like to suggest a simple act of verbal pedantry which could help frame the discussion whenever the topic of the impacts of Covid comes up.

Ask yourself: was the impact actually caused by Covid, or was it caused by "Our Society's Response to Covid?"  - I shorten this to "Our response to Covid".

Examples:

"I lost my sense of smell for a week - because of Covid"

versus

"I lost by business and livelihood during lockdown - because of our response to Covid"

This subtle distinction helps to clarify that the impacts of "Covid" often had nothing to do with the virus directly, but instead were caused by a panicked and completely inappropriate response. If we are going to learn and change policy going forward this point must be made clear.

I'll leave you with a few more examples:

• I didn't visit my grandmother for almost a year while she was isolating because of Covid

• My nephew hasn't been in a classroom for over a year because of our response to Covid.

• My cousin dropped out of college when it went remote because of our response to Covid.

• My uncle still can't operate his business normally because of our response to Covid.

• You still have to wear a mask on a plane because of our response to Covid.

• My state has had a rash of teen suicides because of our response to Covid.

• Undiagnosed cancer is at an all time high because of our response to Covid.

• There's a national employee shortage because of our response to Covid.

• The national debt is at a record high because of our response to Covid.

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