THE ABDICATION OF KING DONALD

If there is one thing all of us should be able to agree on, it is that the COVID-19 pandemic showed us the world is much smaller than we previously imagined. In the past few decades global travel has increased in efficiency and decreased in cost. It is now possible for anyone with average means to transport themselves from almost any point on the planet to any other in time periods measured in hours. Increasingly, record numbers of individuals are taking advantage of this and are traveling outside their country of residence. As hosts to our own viral passengers, the human body becomes a hyper-effective vector which can spread our microscopic stowaways at speeds evolutionary processes could not previously achieve. We live trapped in an ecosystem where viruses, like hurricanes and greenhouse gasses, know no geographical, or geopolitical borders.

Recent events also highlight our global economic interdependence. The term “Supply Chain” now extends beyond the lexicon of transportation logistics professionals and can be heard spoken around middle America’s dinner table as parents explain to children why they must wipe themselves with pages from Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. An oil producing country like Norway, which has a relatively low infection rate, is powerless to stem the trend towards a previously unimaginable negative value of crude oil. These are examples of an interconnected world, both in the physical and the abstract. Such interdependence means that, like it or not, we are all impacted by pandemic response decisions made by people we don’t know, living halfway around the planet.

In this new world without frontiers we can either adapt to the reality of globalism or continue to naively erect fantastical barriers, porous walls that are only effective in creating a false sense of security. For societies to weather the storms of pandemics, adaptation will be required in the form of global cooperation, not imaginary isolation. This cooperation can only be achieved by leaders who understand that the power to control a viral crisis resides not in the power of a nation’s military, or the size of her GDP, but in the simple understanding that we are all in this together, equally, and non-politically.

The concept of a globe without boundaries applies equally, if not more so, to the states within our union. The belief that individual states can stop the spread of pollutants, firearms, or a virus between them is as absurd as a country trying to keep control of a fishery. Fish will blindly swim across territorial boundaries into the nets of a competing country’s trawler just as a virus can and will transit invisible lines of state demarcation. Short of the impossible task of completely stopping the flow of goods and materials between states at the borders, a practice that would be as ineffective as it is draconian, people will freely cross state lines. For this reason, a pandemic should be treated as interstate commerce, and be managed by the Federal government. Conversely, by forcing each state to set its own standards for containment, testing, and mitigation, Trump, by his lack of leadership, will have abdicated his responsibility for our national security. The patchwork of disjointed and conflicting policies created by individual states generates inefficiencies and hinders a united response that such a crisis requires to effectively bring it to a rapid end. We can only hope that the lessons we are learning today highlight the importance of decisive, science-based, non-partisan decision making in the future because it is presently not happening within this administration.