Editorial: What earthquakes can teach us about the pandemic?

By any standard, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest disasters in modern times. One house fire is a disaster for that family. Sudden floods can destroy a town. The 1994 Northridge earthquake killed dozens and damaged projects that took years to recover.

Then there are the major factors, and disasters are so great that they change the fundamentals of societies that strike them.

Think that New Orleans was barely half the size it was before Hurricane Katrina, or how the Mississippi floods of 1927 left hundreds of thousands of African Americans leaving the Mississippi Basin to northern cities, and in the end, abandoning the Republican Party, the Lincoln Party, that didn’t protect them .

The question before us now: How will this epidemic change human society?

The American death toll is already several times the loss of lives of 6,000-12,000 in Hurricane Galveston in 1900 in Texas. It will continue to grow. Unlike earthquakes or hurricanes hitting one region, COVID-19 is chasing the entire planet. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was called the first global catastrophe because its victims, citizens of 50 different countries, died in 13 separate countries. But a coronavirus pandemic is a disaster everywhere. In our interconnected world, no angle will be left unchanged.

The effects of major disasters are seen in the decades or longer required to rebuild a broken economy. San Francisco was the first financial center of the Far West before the 1906 earthquake turned it into ruins. One can argue that he has not regained his status as the West Coast city of interest. The economic damage from a business stoppage is now likely to exceed the cost of any potential natural disaster.

History can show us what is most important when the world passes through this crucible.

After a disaster, we go through two stages. The response comes first, when we work together to save lives. It is a time of great altruism and community spirit. In large earthquakes, you are more likely to be rescued from a building that was shot down by your neighbors. Patriotism rises, and we gather around our elected officials.

After the response comes recovery, when we try to recreate the jobs, systems and normality lost in the disaster. Recovery takes much longer than response, and does not provide the same level of adrenaline. This is the time when human emotions less than charity begin. We start to realize how much we went and worry about protecting and providing our families. Our traditional amenities have disappeared, and anxiety has risen.

Fear is hard to live with, and often we turn to anger, a more manageable emotion. Blame is one of the most common reactions to disasters over time. This may sound strange, but the need to blame, to know accountability, is delivered to our DNA by evolution.

Human intelligence evolved as we competed against predators with strong muscles and larger teeth. When we linked the waves in the grass and the predator hidden in it, we were most likely living and transmitting our genes. Our first response to risk, then, is to find cause and effect patterns that provide pathways to safety.

Determining a pattern to blame the victims – which appears to have shown they brought themselves – gives us greater illusion about safety. We believe that we will avoid their fate by not making the same mistakes. Blaming the government is not reassuring that we are still prone to disaster, but it gives us the option to vote on officials in the hope of better protection next time. Everyone, regardless of their ideology, wants the government to do well in the disaster.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is still in the response phase, and testifies to the selfishness of many, from medical workers to grocery and delivery workers, to those who serve by doing nothing and staying at home. The transition to recovery will be a patchwork process, as we struggle to return to social engagement with populations who remain vulnerable to HIV infection on a large scale.

Beyond that, it may take many years to recover from economic and social turmoil. Just as pipes explode in earthquakes where already weak and neglected dams are those that have been breached in the flood, we can predict that human systems in Big One fail where they are really stressful. Income inequality and inequality in access to health care and housing were indeed weaknesses in American society, and these are where the devastation will be most severe.

The path we take from harm can work for the good or illness. When the Great Depression hit countries around the world, the United States switched to the new agreement while Germany and Italy turned to fascism. Next year, if enough of us succumb to the human desire to anger, blame and see others as a threat, we will face social unrest, damaged democracies, and increased destruction.

But realizing the instinctive urge to find a pattern that focuses on who is wrong can help us avoid these traps. We can manage our emotions and strive for a more evidence-based approach to decision-making in the coming months. We can choose solutions to charges. We can tackle cracks in the dams face to face protecting society.

We can also realize that societies are our greatest strength. When the state government finds ways to help a company keep its employees, when we offer groceries to an elderly neighbor, volunteer at a food bank, or donate blood, we build a network, and build bonds that we can rely on, which will protect us, carrying us forward after the Grand.

Flexibility begins with individual commitment, but only together in societies we will be able to create the new society we need.

Lucy Jones, seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, and founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Science and Society is the author of “The Big Ones.”

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