The Retroactive Mindset

The retroactive mindset places the end of the pandemic, as a concept, at some date in the past. In the retroactive lens, the uncontrollable and deadly spreading event of the virus is viewed as concluded. It sees the situation we have to deal with today as simply an aftershock; a mere ripple on the water surface. Absolute containment and eradication is largely pointless in this world, therefore resources are not wastefully spent pursuing this goal. Instead, effort is diverted to management strategies. The sustained success of the retroactive viewpoint is significantly predicated on widespread and effective vaccination. A failure in this regard tightens the availability of ICU resources that could be redirected to other needs, accumulating undue pressure on healthcare systems. In addition, rampant transmission in this model engenders a climate of uncertainty. If individuals and businesses self-isolate, society would once again accrue some of the mental health and productivity losses associated with isolation.

At worst, then, the retroactive model devolves into entropy, where the burden of one’s safety is individualised. On the flip side, the retroactive mindset is visionary. Well-implemented with tight healthcare safety nets, it is sustainable. By supporting an increase in the fluidity of economic activity, the retroactive model promotes the release of economic flows from a chokehold. Infrastructure adapts over time to suit evolving needs. In its ideal form, the jarring hindrances of the pandemic gradually fade away from the public consciousness.

Cases: studied

By way of case studies, we can pull examples that evince the retroactive model from various regions around the globe. The most extreme application comes in the form of driving at herd immunity with few safeguards. In other words: Boris Johnson’s contentious “herd immunity” model in its vanilla incarnation. While arguably reckless in its manifestation, Johnson remains perhaps one of the earliest to recognise that were the battle with Covid prove to be long-drawn, it would perhaps be wiser and more economical not to bottle it. Instead, striving towards a state of equilibrium as fast as possible to minimise lasting harm may prove more beneficial. Overall, the UK’s easing of restrictions, including the recent rollback on mask-wearing, puts the UK firmly in the retroactive camp. Yet, the focus on the resumption of business and personal activity may come at the expense of the National Health Service.

On a more deliberate front, Singapore offers a more tempered version of the Retroactive soup. The government’s recent shift in the public narrative emphasising an “endemic” mindset (Low, 2021) fits neatly into the retroactive model- nudging the public, in the Singaporean fashion, to move on. Where there were multi-week lockdowns when daily cases hit the thousands in 2020, we find the government barely flinching in early 2022. Instead, external border control measures were adjusted- a frontier that evidently still has the government beat. To augment the earlier point, the government has also shifted away from reporting daily numbers in the newspapers so prominently, further retracting the spotlight on the infection.

The Prospective Mindset

We now consider the prospective mindset. The prospective model is a little apprehensive, a little stern, all in all relatively uncompromising. Time until first response is of the essence, and a desire for perfect knowledge of the situation accompanies it. The prospective mindset puts the end of the pandemic, conceptually, as a state at some point in the future – a specific goal to be attained. In this model, the imposition of lockdowns is no surprise. The endgame is a normalcy indistinguishable from the one that we once had, and the operating assumption is that any measures and incursions into freedoms are temporary, finite, and interim. Vaccinations, again, are important – albeit for a slightly different purpose. Here, vaccines help lower rates of infection and ensure future safety. COVID is a bug to be stamped out of existence.

In its worst embodiment, the prospective model fabricates a draconian world. A ring-file’s worth of additional measures become second nature: mask-wearing, advance bookings, verifications of test statuses and various versions of testing. In its best iteration, these measures continue for a while, but ultimately magnificently reduce or stop. This would occur when transmission has become entirely negligible or essentially wiped out, as observed with some of the periodic scares we’ve had in the past. Till then, these measures are uncompromisingly necessary to achieve a reality of strict eradication.

What does the End look like?

Cases: studied (again)

As case studies of the prospective mindset, we’ll look at three different examples: China, New Zealand, and certain aspects of Singapore’s approach. The most aggressive of these is China’s covid-zero stance (CNA, 2022). In a bid to completely stamp out the coronavirus, China and Hong Kong have pursued the harsh policy of enacting widespread lockdowns, shuttering of small businesses, and returning to work from home. As time wears by, the resolve of the people is appearing to be buckling under the burgeoning economic and psychological tolls. Especially on the former front, those who were already struggling to make ends meet may be harder hit (Hernandez, 2020). New Zealand pursued a similar strategy in its initial response, placing a blanket lockdown and following that up with stringent border restrictions. As of the time of writing, these are still largely in place. By isolating themselves from the rest of the world, New Zealand was able to enjoy life unmasked in 2020 to a greater extent as compared to most other nations. Stimulus packages managed to protect economic growth, but inequality is poised to balloon this year. Can New Zealand’s privileged state of affairs tide them through tili transmission is negligible?

Shifting to Singapore, the implementation of TraceTogether suggests how the prospective mindset may create a more paternalistic social contract. TraceTogether began as the answer to the problem: how do we trace close contacts, especially when people are in public spaces with a large density of them? Movements are logged via bluetooth and linked to one’s health information. At the point of writing, it is almost impossible to enter any mall or communal locations without checking in via TraceTogether. In a scenario probably unimaginable pre-COVID, the people of Singapore have essentially consented to having their personal location information stored in a central database in exchange for the ability to visit malls and public places. Recently, it was announced that this data, initially declared as being collected purely for contact tracing, would now be available to the police. Clearly, this turn of events puts more power into the hands of the authority. While no misuse of this data is to be expected or reported, some oppose the granting of this power on a purely symbolic level, because it could provide precedent for future unilateral action.

Where should we go from here?

As we can clearly see, the stance adopted by a country, and the underlying assumptions, have implications on the resultant policy and shape the eventual narrative. Given the severity and length of the pandemic, the impacts have been manifold. COVID changed work, commuting and energy consumption patterns. It fuelled the rise of new industries, and added new words into our everyday lexicon. It affected our mental health and our economies. So a full response to COVID is not just an economic response, or a psychological response. It is all these and more. It is thus maybe unsurprising to find that important determinants of community resilience as identified by disaster-response research include factors we have discussed: governance, economic investment, healthcare, and the maintenance of a community network (Patel et al., 2017).

Stamping a virus out may seem like the only attractive and secure option upfront, but it comes with heavy costs. Harsh and prolonged lockdowns stopper economic activity, separate families from each other, and are a manpower-intensive operation. Once vaccines exist to reduce the lethality of contracting the virus, it may arguably be more sustainable and smarter to adopt the retroactive mindset, making a country more flexible in its response to new mutations and changing infection rates. Instead of a vice-like grip threatening to snap, a deliberate but dampened rise in infections may be the more prudent option that fends off chaos when the hammer falls.

Nevertheless, it remains important that governments conceptualise an end– whether either of the two models or a custom blend of their own, so that its citizens may eventually be able to do so too. And when we’re finally at the end we so valiantly seek, we’ll know it doubtlessly . “What was COVID-19?”

Oh, that.

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