As an invisible enemy begins to overwhelm the town of Oran in Albert Camus’s novel The Plague, a mid-level government bureaucrat named Castel insists that he seek orders from the central government before implementing a course of action to combat the worsening viral epidemic. The book’s hero, the doctor Rieux, responds to this indignantly. “Orders!” he laments. “When what’s needed is imagination.”
As Americans look for direction from our federal, state, and local governments, many can relate to the character of Castel: We are now awaiting orders in the midst of events most imagined could only be found in a novel like Camus’s. And despite the twenty-something spring breakers partying in Miami Beach as if they will live forever, most Americans have displayed a steely willingness to follow whatever orders come their way. Yet for us, and for citizens of every nation whose lives are set to be upended by the coronavirus pandemic, what is needed most in these unprecedented times is imagination.
It is only normal that most of us feel we are playing catch up with the spiraling events of each day’s news cycle. The imagination is often dormant until it is confronted with facts once considered unimaginable. Since the first known coronavirus case emerged in China, possibly on November 17, 2019, the diagnostic numbers around the globe have skyrocketed. Those figures now challenge even the most expansive imaginations: as of this writing, over 1.2 million cases worldwide, with 15,000 deaths in Italy, 13,000 in Spain, and 9,000 in the United States. It is difficult to imagine a world like this, let alone accept that we are living in it.
Yet the numbers hint at our new normal; it is not for nothing that the Surgeon General warns this week will be “our Pearl Harbor moment.” Although we are only beginning to envision what the new world will look like, many of us are beginning to grasp that our national life is going to change in ways we can hardly fathom. The most important societal distinction that is emerging will be between people who come to recognize this now, and people who come to recognize it later.
Unsurprisingly, many of our leaders in government are still promising a return to the old world. Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois told his state’s residents that “there’s absolutely no need to change your normal purchasing habits” in the very speech in which he announced a statewide stay-at-home order. As late as the middle of March, Congressman Don Young advised Americans to “go forth with everyday activities.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo promised a “return to normalcy” on a day New York City lost 349 people in the span of eight hours. That day was April 5th.
That our leaders are making these comments even as they dutifully dole out the latest guidance of our public health authorities illuminates the cognitive dissonance of our pandemic-inflected era: We are seeking to navigate radically uncertain times using the certainties of the past as guideposts. This thinking is all too human. It also inhibits us from taking the actions necessary to chart the best possible course through the crisis.
This is because what is needed now is the ability to imagine, and be motivated by, the worst-case scenario—an outcome that is likelier than not if we keep our old habits, yet an outcome that resembles nothing most of us have seen.
The message that we can all just return to the way things were after we outlast a brief bout of inconvenience, however well-intentioned that message may be, plays into the human tendency to fall back on the familiar. This process is well-documented by renowned psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky as the “familiarity heuristic”: the instinct, especially prominent in times of cognitive stress, to operate from a state of mind from which one has comfortably operated before.
In our current situation, we employ this habit of mind when we seek clever ways to do the same things we would have done a month ago, rather than postponing those things altogether. We do it when we ignore social distancing guidelines, convincing ourselves that one person alone transmitting the virus is not going to make a difference. Our politicians do it when they slow down emergency legislation to advance their pet projects, as if the health of the nation wasn’t at stake.
These old ways of thinking, relatively harmless in the age of the flu, could prove fatal in the era of coronavirus. The paradox of our present predicament, and especially our economy, is that large-scale activity today is sure to lead to utter ruin tomorrow. Without drastically altering our patterns of thought and action, the coming weeks could bring deaths on a magnitude that strain belief. Averting this possible reality is not going to be accomplished by sticking to our normal habits and striving for the life we used to live. Nor will it be accomplished solely by adhering to government orders. For the sake of our fellow citizens, we all must take actions that push the bounds of what once was imaginable. To do otherwise would only deepen and prolong our social and economic woes.
Thankfully, many Americans are treating this like the wartime call to arms it is. Doctors and health care professionals file reports from the front lines in an effort to advance our understanding and convince us of the severity of our challenge. The White House issues new regulations, like allowing doctors to practice across state lines, that would be sensible in peacetime and may prove essential now. Public-private partnerships strive to inspire unconventional thinking that can meet the roadblocks before us. While some of these proposals are novel, many are simple. The most imaginative ideas often are.
Together, they point us toward a central tenet of our new reality: The best solutions to our common challenge begin with acceptance of the facts that are right before our eyes.
This requires imagining a new kind of hero. The globalized flaneur of the pre-epidemic era, jet-setting to exotic locales and equally at home everywhere, may not find an environment in which to set foot anytime soon. As borders close and individuals isolate, perhaps, paradoxically, our imaginations may find the freedom to turn outward, not to far-flung destinations in search of fleeting connections, but in service of our neighbors, our communities, and the most vulnerable among us.
We must also confront the geopolitical reality this crisis has laid bare: that the United States and China are engaged in a systemic competition altogether different from that of the last century’s Cold War. China has for decades been taking advantage of the West’s openness to undermine it sotto voce from within. The spread of this latest coronavirus is merely a logical consequence of the West’s unwitting facilitation of China’s successful insinuation into market capitalist systems; Iran and Italy, two countries that have prioritized economic links with China, have been hit especially hard.
Yet despite the material advances the China model has produced, the pandemic has starkly illumined that it remains more authoritarian than capitalist. The West is likely to act on that knowledge by repatriating supply chains essential to national security while refashioning its trade relationships for less critical items on more favorable terms. Whether the idea of accelerated competition with China is something we can easily imagine, the reality of it is now upon us all.