What If the Pandemic Was Man-Made?

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, history-minded columnists started cracking open their books and looking for what happened in plagues of the past. Maybe that would be a guide to the near-term future. And indeed, we saw history repeat itself: some people shutting in for fear of the illness, others living almost more hedonistically, lest they miss out on some of life’s joy before the end. Cities emptying and their inhabitants spreading the disease into the provinces and countryside. We saw New York City seed most of the American nation with coronavirus. In the chronicles of the late Middle Ages we find ecstatic religious movements taking to the streets to do reparation before God. In 2020 we saw protests around the world. Pandemics can bring rioting. Ditto. And in the past there was scapegoating, usually of Jews. We watched mayor Bill DeBlasio calling out the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, even as Black Lives Matter defied social distancing and curfews imposed on everyone else.

But now we may have something new in a pandemic: a handful of guilty humans and governments.