Americans have had it easy for so long that our current troubles seem especially awful.
Put another way: Most of us didn’t appreciate how good things were, or how much worse they could be.
That’s human nature. We become preoccupied by current circumstances and fail to put them into context.
But if we look back, we’ll learn that our nation has gone through rough times before.
Quarantines aren’t new. While most of us have not experienced orders to stay home and away from other people, our parents and grandparents did — or have friends or family who were ordered not to leave the house for a month or more.
Up into the 1950s, such quarantine orders were common, as local and state authorities worked to halt the spread of diseases such as polio and scarlet fever.
During the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, quarantines were used in many states and communities to stop or slow the deadly disease.
But as John M. Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” wrote in a piece for the New York Times:
“For interventions to work, people have to comply and they have to sustain that compliance; most of that depends on voluntary efforts and individual behavior.”
The world’s history of pandemics, Barry noted, shows that it’s hard to get people to adopt tough restrictions, and even harder to convince people to sustain them for weeks or months.
Compliance becomes even harder when a family’s financial security is lost.
Today’s looming economic crisis comes after an unprecedented period of growth.
The advance of social safety nets, progressive regulation of business, a better educated populace, advances in science and technology and other factors have allowed the nation to build a sturdier, more stable economy.
Even as scary times descend on us, they aren’t as frightening as the early 1930s. When the unemployment rate among Americans peaked at 24.9 percent, there were virtually no government programs to help desperate and panicked people.
As perilous and uncertain as life now seems, we should understand that how we as Americans deal with the current crisis will determine what kind of nation we will be when we emerge from this crisis.
