In Illness as Metaphor, Sontag begins by describing sickness as a kingdom, an ignored facet of life to those who dwell in the land of the healthy. It indeed seems that we try to look away from illness as much as we can; as illustrated by the cholera outbreaks in 1832 across Europe and the U.S., people believed that they would be safe from the pandemic -- that they were different in some way from those who fell sick -- until they or those close to them caught the plague as well. In the present time, in the current COVID pandemic, we as a country acted extremely slowly. From what I have personally heard from people when they first started working from home in March, they expected to only be working remotely for a few weeks, a month or two at most. But at that point, we already could see from the spread of the disease in other countries that it would take much, much longer than that to sufficiently stop the virus. Even now, in September, six full months after cases first started appearing in the U.S., people deny the existence of the virus when they themselves have not encountered it. 

In the metaphorical context of illness as a military affair, then, it appears that in these times we treat disease socially as a series of duels. Sickness is solitary. 

Recently there have been several publicized mass gatherings -- the Sturgis motorcycle rally notably had almost 500,000 attendees -- with many denying the existence of the virus at all. There seems to be an almost fanatical desire to believe in the status quo, or to at least return to it, no matter how much evidence points to the contrary. On college campuses such as our own, students continue to throw parties regardless of the guidelines given by the school or by the government despite knowing (and hopefully believing) that COVID exists. Perhaps it is more understandable on isolated campuses like that of Swarthmore, but this trend exists universally in universities; schools in dense cities are no exception. It seems that COVID, as cholera before, only comes into consideration when directly in sight. I would hazard a guess that very few, if any, of those partygoers have family formerly or presently infected.

They are not, as is the common analogy in the media, on the front lines. They are civilians far away from the battlegrounds. Fighting a pandemic is surely a defensive war, if we are to extend the metaphor, then. The battles are meant to protect the civilian population. But in a defensive war, the danger is clear and imminent. A direct loss, or a too sluggish defense, has a very clear cost. Against the microbial enemy, those away from the disease’s hotspots have a blurrier vision of what there is to lose. Unlike in a defensive war, a nation’s unprepared response to a pandemic does not guarantee any negative impact on an individual -- a prepared nation’s quarantine measures immediately do. To a citizen far from the epicenters of the pandemic, the danger is not apparent; under ideal circumstances, it never would be. No matter how reasonable and necessary the precautions put in place, it would appear excessive.

There was a quote that I heard around the Democratic primaries describing our healthcare system as a “sickness care system”. The intended message was that our approach to health treats symptoms of underlying systemic problems, rather than the root issues themselves. Using Heine’s analogy of revolution, “just so long the national malady is not perfectly cured; and the sickly and excited people will often relapse into the weakness of their exhaustion.” Without addressing the grievances of the populace, revolution inevitably reappears. If we only treat symptoms as they appear, we will inevitably relapse. 

In the realm of public health, this would refer to a multitude of environmental, economic, and political factors. Using economic terms, the negative externalities from industries of all kinds aren’t properly priced in. With fast food, for example, we see immediately the cheap price, the great value. But that deficit in cost builds as a debt in personal health; given the large variance in insurance quality among Americans, this debt is sometimes literal as well. Perhaps a few decades ago this was too far removed for the average consumer to understand -- basic nutritional science is more commonly understood now -- but a scientific understanding of this doesn’t seem to translate to our lifestyles. The wide appeal of fast food is well understood. It’s cheap, filling, and convenient, and designed to be addictive. Though perhaps with some calculation the first three factors may be nullified to some degree, the last requires some extra incentive. Economic pressure can have some effect in realizing the externalities unaccounted for. Sugary drinks, similarly unhealthy and addictive, have been taxed additionally in many areas, with generally significant impact on consumption of such beverages. Fast food as a whole is too broad to apply directly analogous legislation, but the root ideas are the same.

A pandemic is not a war for the very reason that fighting a defensive war is so urgent and inarguable. The threat in such a war is clear. The invaders are the enemy, and they threaten you immediately. A pandemic such as our current one may not reach you or your family at all, depending on where you live. You may not even know anyone with the virus. The threat is distant, made even more so by talking heads downplaying it further. Perhaps this is a reason why many European countries, despite being so quickly and overwhelmingly hit with the virus, have dealt with COVID better than the U.S.. There is less physical distance between people and the epicenters, and so they are more likely to have first-hand accounts from people they know. In the U.S., where the first cases appeared in New York, with the entirety of the continental states between the two coastal population centers, there is no such immediacy.