How will history books recount COVID?

Exploring familiar topics in an unfamiliar future

How will future history books describe the COVID pandemic? To explore how it may one day be recounted, I gave ChatGPT a series of newspaper articles about COVID and asked it to rewrite them in the style of a history book in the distant future. The below are some of the more plausible snippets, organised by topic – it’s worth reading to the end.

Overall lessons

Perhaps the most important “lesson” taught by the pandemic was the realization that those measures that worked the best to control a highly infectious disease – bans on public gatherings, school closures, and strict quarantine and isolation – were precisely the ones most difficult to implement.

The spread was simple to understand, but difficult to control.

With the luxury of hindsight, it is easy to understand why the public health strategies adopted failed.

Public health response

They drew on infection-control methods that had been elaborated and tested for decades, in some cases centuries, including quarantine, isolation, disinfection, ventilation, and personal hygiene.

Authorities had difficult choices to make. They could impose city-wide bans on public gatherings, but a less drastic approach allowed public places to stay open but required additional preventive measures.

Implementing social-distancing measures in these big cities presented a massive public health challenge. They had complex economies dependent on both industry and commerce that could easily be damaged by quarantines and closures.

To inflict such economic damage on a city’s economy required a public health emergency without precedent.

Analysis of spread

Rarely if ever before in the annals of medicine has a manifestation of epidemic disease been studied by numerous observers with so much ardor.

From its outset, the pandemic was linked with crowded places... Although isolation of the sick was essential, quarantine measures had to be accompanied by broader measures.

Communication

Public health authorities worried that the public was insufficiently impressed by the threat, others warned against the dangers of overreacting. Yet this “don't panic” message surely contributed to public confusion about exactly how scared people should be.

The lines of resistance reflected divisions both within the public health community and between the public health departments and the communities they served.

Masks

Public health authorities promoted mask use as a measure that would allow cities to function while minimizing the spread. When cities lifted public-gathering bans, they often did so with the proviso that people wear masks. Mask wearing gained considerable popularity as an emblem of public spiritedness and discipline.

Still, masks had their detractors within the public health community. One notable critic declared “masks are worthless.”

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Will the above descriptions end up in the history books?

Well, it turns out they already have. Remember how I said I’d got ChatGPT to rewrite contemporary COVID articles? That didn’t actually happen. The above quotes are instead all about the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, taken from this paper by Nancy Tomes.

Unfortunately, history is sometimes closer than we might realise. So if we want to avoid lessons from 2020-22 looking simply like lessons from 1918-19, I think we should be looking more closely at the new approaches and ideas that were successful globally for COVID. And working to address questions about feasibility that even now remain unanswered.

Before the next pandemic arrives.