The video, “COVID-19 vs. Spanish Flu – If You Don’t Know, Now You Know”, is a prime example of the idea that learning from history is necessary. In the introduction of the segment it is stated that “hardly anyone alive has seen a pandemic like this before”, and this is the reason why the world is struggling with it so much. With what we have seen from the reaction to COVID-19 by Americans, it seems like this is the first pandemic to have ever existed. There are shocking similarities in how the nation reacted (and is reacting) to COVID-19. For example, the federal government downplaying it. Woodrow Wilson downplayed the Spanish Flu, and in a striking similar fashion Donald Trump has/is downplaying COVID-19. This was done in order to not cause citizens to be alarmed, however in both cases it did more harm than good. One would think that the response to COVID-19 would be better than a pandemic over 100 years ago, however it seems that history was not looked back upon. Everyone knows that you are supposed to learn from history, especially the mistakes in history. Trevor Noah states, “so far America has made all the same mistakes with Corona that it did with the Spanish Flu”. Americans need to figure out how to learn from history, and fast, otherwise we are bound to fall into the trap of continuing to repeat the worst part of history–– the second wave. COVID-19 is on track to model all that happened during the Spanish Flu, and if we don’t make changes to our response, the worst is yet to come.
It is up to the federal government, especially the President, to make these changes (quickly) because, “it is not too late to learn from history” (Noah). Right now, and going forward, what the United States needs is a leader who is going to take his job seriously, especially when it comes to the lives of thousands of Americans. The biggest problem the United States faces is that there are citizens who “don’t believe in the virus” and this idea was ignited by the President denying its severity and not doing all he could do to inform the citizens of how to act in response to it. We are where we are today because of the mistakes made at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and if things don’t change quickly, it doesn’t look likely that we will get out of it anytime soon.
I agree with you that America needs to learn from its history. It is so interesting and shocking to me that we have been through global pandemics before, yet we can’t seem to get Covid-19 under control. It makes me wonder, if we ever get over this, and there happens to be another in the future, will we have even learned from this one?
I like how you discussed how how Americans seem to be turning a blind eye to history when it should be at the top of our discusses in relation to our approach to Covid-19. You would think that because we are so much more socially and technologically advanced we would be able to handle a pandemic in a way more efficient, cohesive, and successful manner. However, we have a lot to learn from how previous pandemics and epidemics were dealt with and what the consequences were.