I recently finished listening to an audiobook version of “An Enemy of the People,” by Henrik Ibsen, a play suggested to me by my sage mother. In this story, Thomas Stockman, the medical officer of a local spa in a quiet resort town makes a disturbing discovery; the baths (spas) are toxic. At first, it seems like this will be an important revelation that will save hundreds of people from death and disease.
It’s the economy, stupid.
That is, until the economic costs to correct the situation are revealed. To fix the contamination, the city would need to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars and would require shutting down the spa for years while the work is done. Public opinion quickly rallies behind the city’s mayor, and Thomas’ brother, Peter, who frames the medical officer as “an enemy of the people” for his apparent desire to destroy the economy of the small town with his “lies.”
Echoing through the present.
Though it was written in the late 1800s and set in Norway, the story is echoes through the events of today. The most obvious reflection is in the United States’ COVID-19 pandemic response. When COVID-19 was first discovered in late 2019, most of America, including the highest levels of its government, preferred to pretend like it didn’t exist. Reports were exaggerated. Lifelong public servants, like Anthony Fauci, were quite literally labeled public enemies, just as Dr. Stockman was, simply for trying to do the right thing and share the truth of the situation with the public.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to economics. In “An Enemy of the People,” Peter, the mayor, would have had no motivation to suppress the news about the baths if not for the economic consequences. For the White House, in early 2020, the calculation was similar. The reports and recommendations from public health officials were devastating. Shut down the American economy? That would cost billions, maybe trillions of dollars in lost revenues and plunge the country into a recession, in an election year, nonetheless.
Peter Stockman reflected in Donald Trump
So what did President Trump do? Probably the only thing he felt he could do; downplay the pandemic at every turn. He contradicted public health officials at news conferences. He vilified figures like Drs, Birks and Fauci. He pressured HHS Secretary Azar to do things that weren’t recommended, and undermined the integrity and public trust in apolitical and vitally important agencies such as the CDC. At a time in which a robust public health response was needed, Trump actively worked to handicap and compromise the ability of public health to respond to the pandemic. The parallels to Peter Stockman are conspicuous.
Did it have to be this way?
This is not what happened in other countries. Ironically, today, Norway was almost entirely eliminated COVID-19. They have no restrictions whatsoever, because of their 95% vaccination rate. Here in Dent County, Missouri, we’re sitting at an impressively bad 32%.
Today, more than 20 months after the first lockdown in the US, the economy is recovering, and we are now facing the consequences of our choices. Supply chain and labor issues continue to hinder many sectors of the economy. The “Great Resignation” is upon us. People have decided that life is too short and too valuable to spend working in a job that does not value them. They simply aren’t willing to work for poverty wages any longer. In addition, we cannot neglect the effect that 750,000 COVID deaths have had on our economy. Those were workers, consumers, family, and friends. Many of them are gone long before their time.
Dollars and things can be recovered, rebuilt, or reearned, but people who pass are lost forever.
The Hidden Cost of COVID
Millions more did not pass, but are permanently disabled or affected by COVID-19. Brain damage, heart failure, kidney failure, lung failure, and more… these are all outcomes that many people who survived COVID-19 now have to live with. How many workers were spared from death by COVID, but removed from the workforce nevertheless? It may take us a long time to see the full picture of destruction that COVID has wrought.
These are the things that public health officials warned us about early in the pandemic when instead of acting, politicians were debating the economic fallout of those actions. Closing things down undoubtedly hurt the economy, but what would the economic cost have been had it not been closed, or if more cooperation with public health measures and vaccines had been allowed? How much money was spent treating COVID-19 instead of building roads? How many people were buried in the ground instead of furthering their education? How many fell into substance abuse or suicide instead of contentment and productivity?
A lack of foresight.
The Norwegian resort town in “An Enemy of the People” also failed while making a similar calculation. The long term consequences were not properly weighed against the short term benefits of ignoring the contamination. Had they chose to fix it, in 2-3 years they could have had a healthy, new, and prosperous spa. Instead, when word gets out that the baths infect and kill rather than heal and restore, the town’s reputation will be forever destroyed with no chance for recovery. Who would continue to vacation to a resort bathed in unfiltered industrial refuse? Then, if it is fixed, who would trust that the changes were appropriately made by the same government who chose to ignore the problem in the first place?
The problem is not government itself. The problem is bad government and poor leadership. In a democracy, We the People are the government. We must rise above our short-sighted self-interests when public health is at stake. We must be able to see the forest through the trees. We must make decisions based on what is best for each other, and not just each other’s economy.
We cannot allow self-serving and fickle public opinion to become today’s enemy of the people.
