The Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted serious destruction both in loss of life and economically in the United States. But as with all crises, it is exposing systemic weaknesses both in society and its institutions. There can be little doubt that every American is now keenly aware of how truly fragile the system within he/she lives is. That system is “out of balance” and it will emerge from the crisis with substantial changes. The nature of those changes will be a mix of reactive and proactive modifications. Some proactive changes will be intended to reduce the exposure to disease in the future. Others will be driven by an extreme motivation to “never let it happen again.” The irony is that the latter approach is ultimately guaranteed to imbalance the system further rather than balance it. It is rooted in the misguided belief that man can control nature.
To better understand the importance of balance, consider the metaphor of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For clarity, just consider crises caused by three that are common among the variations on the theme: war, famine, and plague. Covid-19 falls into the plague category. Extreme measures to never let such a plague happen again might lead to more severe quarantining measures being imposed much sooner and for much longer. If taken to extremes, the ramifications would be to halt all productive parts of the economy for months—in particular, food production. The “rule of threes” for survival is that we can survive three months without food. The resulting imbalance would be famine that would kill many more than the disease. In an effort to avoid starvation, civil society could degenerate into Hobbes’ “war of all against all.” Overreaction leads to imbalance.
