The Case Against Waging War on the Coronavirus – The Atlantic

Read: A letter from wartime France

The last time the world faced a pandemic of this scale, it was in the middle of an actual war. The Spanish flu appeared during the waning months of World War I, before quickly spreading around the world, infecting a third of the global population and killing tens of millions of people. Unlike with the current pandemic, invoking wartime imagery wasnt necessary to spur action against the Spanish flu. By that point in the war, everyone had already been making all these sacrifices, Mark Honigsbaum, a medical historian and the author of The Pandemic Century, told me, noting that many countries were already united against a common enemy, Germany, before this unseen enemy, the Spanish flu, came along.

There is a long history of world leaders framing fights against disease within the context of war. From Richard Nixons war on cancer to the Ebola wars, politicians have invoked battle analogies to communicate the seriousness of an issue and galvanize a national response. (The same can be said for matters that have nothing to do with disease, such as Lyndon B. Johnsons War on Poverty and the global War on Terror.)

In some ways, these wartime metaphors make sense. John Baugh, a linguist at Washington University in St. Louis, told me that when politicians and health officials invoke this language, its often because they feel that the public has not yet taken the problem seriously, an issue that, until very recently, was almost certainly the case with the coronavirus pandemic. Many countries were slow to figure out how best to respond to the crisis, while large swaths of their populations openly flouted social-distancing guidance. When the severity finally began to sink in, world leaders seized on terms such as battle plan, enemy, and frontline as a means of waking people up to the urgency of the situation and fostering a sense of solidarity.

But while wartime imagery can promote national cohesion, it can also breed fear, which can in turn drive anxiety and panic. The myriad changes being made to wage this warincluding enforced lockdowns, closures of schools and businesses, and the postponement of major events, such as electionsand the looming prospect of a global recession have not only created uncertainty, but stripped many people of any sense of control. One of the most visible ways this fear has manifested has been in the increasing prevalence of empty supermarketsa by-product of what appeared to be a surge in panic-buying that made newly precious commodities such as hand sanitizer, face masks, and toilet paper scarce or, in some cases, prohibitively expensive. (Other items, such as illicit drugs and firearms, experienced a similar increase in demand.) In this case, evoking war didnt just alert people to the severity of the situation. For some of the most vulnerable members of society, including the elderly and health-care workers, it made the crisis much, much worse.

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The Case Against Waging War on the Coronavirus - The Atlantic