Harvard University Professor Arthur Scheslinger, Jr. served as a special assistant and “court historian” to President John Kennedy until the latter’s death in November 1963. Two years later, his book “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House” was published. Around that same time, when interviewed he was asked to assess the impact of the Kennedy presidency. He easily could have stated that it still is too soon to offer a complete assessment, but instead he indicated that it was best to characterize the situation as a quasi-categorical demurral.

While recognizing it may be highly unlikely that many individuals would express their views in this kind of parlance, for the sake of argument let’s assume for the purpose of the following brief disquisition that the professor’s use of this terminology can be applied constructively to COVID-19 and its imagined aftermath. As indicated by an article on page five of this issue of TRENDS, more than 100,000 scientific publications already have been published about the coronavirus, but until it runs its final course, presumably any satisfying definitive analysis will have to remain a work in progress for the nonce.

The purported necessity of closing down a major portion of the U.S. economy, the largest in the world, is a topic that undoubtedly will attract considerable attention. One aspect certainly will include whether deleterious health impacts, such as increases in child/intimate partner abuse, alcohol/drug substance use/abuse, suicidal ideation, homelessness, and lost educational opportunities for students ultimately proved to be more devastating than COVID-19 itself.

Closer to home regarding the academic community, some insights are provided by an editorial published in the August 29, 2020 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. For example, the pandemic is undermining the ability of researchers to do their jobs and of universities to provide a high-quality and safe educational experience for students. Moreover, the pandemic will have complex, unexpected, and long-term implications for research that must be anticipated now. Essential pillars are under threat, such as a workforce with the skills, training, experience, relationships, and networks needed for research excellence; necessary resources, including funding; and multidisciplinary perspectives supported by science. Spending on education and research is threatened by economic downturns with academic budgets squeezed by COVID-19, jeopardizing jobs and research funding.

An effective vaccine soon may become available. According to information appearing in the August 29-September 4, 2020 issue of The Economist, the pollster YouGov reveals that only 37% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats say they would be vaccinated for COVID-19. The figure is barely 30% for middle-aged and less-educated individuals on the right end of the political spectrum. Not only in the U.S., but among other nations “anti-vaxx” sentiments have many followers who are even more distrustful about vaccine safety and effectiveness than U.S. residents. Hence, while there is value in looking ahead to a time when this coronavirus disappears, it essentially remains much too soon to understand its full impact.

Return to September 2020 TRENDS

A QUASI-CATEGORICAL DEMURRAL

More September 2020 TRENDS Articles

A QUASI-CATEGORICAL DEMURRAL

WHISTLING THE COLLEGE HORNPIPE

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QUICK STAT (SHORT, TIMELY, AND TOPICAL)

AVAILABLE RESOURCES ACCESSIBLE ELECTRONICALLY

COMPOSITION AND CAPACITY OF THE GENETICS WORKFORCE

THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF SOCIAL DISTANCE