This piece, written by Yascha Mounk and published this week in The Atlantic, has generated considerable debate (and engendered considerable angry pushback) on social media and in various outlets of widely varying political orientations, and because of its undeniable (if simplistic) appeal, it is probably worth bringing to people’s attention, if only for purposes of discussion.
Mounk is a German-American political scientist and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has no medical background. His is one of the first pieces of its type from a relatively liberal-leaning perspective, assuming the threat of the most recent major COVID-19 variant continues to diminish. Mounk’s thesis—as the title of his piece, “Open Everything,” implies—is that “the time to end pandemic restrictions is now.”
Just to be clear, by highlighting this piece I’m not in any way endorsing its thesis or argument.
Mounk counts himself among those who advocated complete lockdowns and the elimination of most public events at the start of the pandemic, but now he believes the advent and availability of vaccines and boosters, as well as anti-viral medications to treat those who suffer from infection by the virus, have altered the landscape to the point where “[w]e finally have the tools to live with the coronavirus.” He anticipates the argument that several states that initially embraced the most comprehensive COVID-19 restrictions have already “opened” to a large extent; however, he focuses on those aspects of everyday life causing people to continue to live and act essentially in the shadow of the virus. These include continued adherence to mask requirements in schools, persistent cleaning protocols, travel restrictions, and continued office closures. Mounk supports his position by citing an Axios poll this week in which only 18% of Americans felt their lives had returned to “normal,” despite the widespread lifting of restrictions.
In other words, Mounk recognizes that many people still feel their lives and mental states continue to be cumulatively altered even though, taken individually, such restrictions have little adverse impact. Noting that many vaccinated Americans continue to internalize risk/benefit considerations in their behavior, he suggests that we have entered a time where the psychological risks of “social malaise” brought on by what is for many now a routine process of reflexively second-guessing our activities can (and should) be outweighed by the benefits of fully “re-opening” our society.
Mounk observes:
Accepting restrictions that weaken our social ties when they seemed temporary was one thing. Putting up with them indefinitely is quite another. For many, the sense that we will live in pandemic purgatory for months or years to come now poses a heavy psychological burden.
The key question regarding continued COVID-19 restrictions, as Mounk sees it, is: “What purpose do they still serve?” Noting the original goal of lockdowns and social distancing measures was to contain and possibly eradicate the virus, a goal that quickly morphed into “flattening the curve,” he believes that the present, uneasy equilibrium between those who are and who are not vaccinated is unlikely to change much (beyond the obvious goal to ensure vaccination of small children). While he acknowledges (far too glibly) that our hospitals are “strained,” he no longer sees the fear of their imminent collapse as a realistic possibility, at least given the status quo (though he admits that should a new, dangerous variant similar to omicron appear, his argument would be moot). Therefore, Mounk concludes, the impetus towards restrictions on activities should end.
By this I mean that we should lift all remaining restrictions on everyday activities (which were, in any case, unable to prevent the rapid circulation of Omicron cases this winter). Children should be allowed to take off their mask in school. We should get rid of measures such as deep cleaning that are purely performative. Politicians and public-health officials should send the message that Americans should no longer limit their social activities, encouraging them to resume playdates and dinner parties without guilt.
Mounk then examines each of the downsides to this approach, but he places those downsides in the current context, including the marked disparity in rates of severe illness or death between the vaccinated and those who remain unvaccinated, as well as the availability of anti-viral drugs to treat infection.
I believe his argument is weak here as such drugs are only starting to become available for many.
More significantly (and controversially), Mounk addresses the continued risk to those who remain unvaccinated, including those who are unvaccinated by choice and those who remain so not out of any personal omission or failing but because they simply cannot receive the vaccine.
Noting that those who are fully vaccinated continue to make sacrifices for those who are not—whether unvaccinated by choice or by unavoidable circumstance—Mounk believes that for those in the first category, we cannot continue to consider ourselves responsible for their misguided choices. I agree. He notes the incongruity of someone from a highly vaccinated area wearing a mask to “protect” those in a highly unvaccinated area: “[S]ince social restrictions are strictest in those parts of the country where most people are vaccinated, they are unlikely to help those who are most in need of protection.”
It is our relationship to the second category of unvaccinated—the immunocompromised, young children, and the elderly—where Mounk’s rationale becomes less factually based, less convincing, and more of a sociological argument. Mounk acknowledges that continued susceptibility and suffering are likely to continue on a global basis and that this is a tragic, unavoidable reality. But at the point where we now are, he argues, that risk does not outweigh the risks of permanently altering society to make it “less free, sociable and joyous.” The uncomfortable reality, as he sees it, is that endemic COVID-19 is something we will have to face for the foreseeable future. He notes that from a historical perspective, human society has had to make similar choices from a far less forgiving baseline.
In the America of 1900, for example, nearly 1 percent of people died from infectious diseases every year, about an order of magnitude higher than today. And yet Americans exposed to such dangers chose to engage in a full social life, judging that the risk of pestilence—however serious—did not justify forgoing human connection.
In the end, Mounk believes that the choice we must be prepared to make in the face of an endemic virus is whether we should prioritize, like those of generations before us, “the living of life over the minimizing of mortality.”
I’m not qualified to say whether he’s right or wrong, premature, wholly off-base, or timely in this assessment, and I’d much prefer to see this type of analysis from a medical perspective, one that better explores alternative options and their consequences—including the implications for those who suffer (or may suffer in the future) from "long COVID," which Mounk does not appear to contemplate. I personally lean towards waiting for further data, more widespread vaccine distribution, and a better sense of potential outcomes, but I understand the continued sense of oppression, fear, and psychological stress that many still feel, despite all of the positive steps that have been taken. There are also some stark political considerations implicated by continued imposition of restrictions, which is a whole different subject.
But I do know that many in this country have already made that decision without a hint of thought, let alone compassion or introspection. For many parts of this country, there is no debate: They’re fully “open” already because they simply don’t care, or their political leaders or social media have convinced them that they need not care.
For those of us who do care, however, it seems inevitable that we’re going to be faced with undertaking an analysis similar to what Mounk describes in accordance with our own sense of morality and weighed in balance with the quality of our lives, of the risks we are willing to take, and the extent we are willing to put others at risk.
Not today, perhaps not even tomorrow. But soon.