In medicine, when patients face a difficult decision whether to seek aggressive treatment, they are often asked what they are and are not willing to sacrifice. When patients cannot speak for themselves, someone else has to answer for them. This task can tear families apart; there is, for instance, the well-recognized seagull syndrome—in which the family member who lives farthest away from the patient flies into town and craps all over the plan. Designating a decision-maker helps insure that choices will be guided by the patient’s priorities, not anyone else’s.
Conflict is also why so many people say they hate politics. We want consensus—badly enough that we convince ourselves that it can be created if we only try hard enough. “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it,” Mahatma Gandhi said, getting closer to the truth. (Even Ronald Reagan repeated the sentiment.) Among the questions we now face is that of how our frayed democracy can cope with the conflict required to navigate the global pandemic.
As a country, we still face a long, potholed road. We will soon exceed half a million deaths from covid-19. It’s not inconceivable that we will reach three-quarters of a million or even a million deaths this year; the magnitude of certain dangers is difficult to predict. The world’s uncontrolled circulation of the virus has already bred mutant strains that are markedly more infectious than existing ones. Some have developed the ability to at least partially evade current vaccines, and further mutations may develop that more fully evade the vaccines, requiring updated formulations. Or—as has been our repeated pattern when public-health measures have succeeded in slowing the spread of the virus—we could simply take our foot off the brakes too soon.
