A Pessimist’s Guide to the Pandemic

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, along with new government measures and vaccine developments shaping its trajectory, many people are still left confused about how best to respond. Should be pessimistic or optimistic about the current situation and the future? In terms of personal well-being, an optimistic attitude is ostensibly preferable. Adjusting to the ‘new normal’ and having hope in a bright, pandemic-free future can build resiliency, whereas it’s not too difficult to imagine how a more pessimistic perspective can lead to worsened mental health, at a time when protecting our mental health is essential.

Indeed, there is a strong evidence base demonstrating that pessimism, as a personality trait, is associated with worsened mental health outcomes, such as increased depression and anxiety, whereas optimism helps to protect subjective well-being and promote motivation in times of adversity. However, pessimism can – in moderation and in certain circumstances – have great utility. If done so resiliently, anticipating undesirable outcomes and fixating on the negative can lead to more sensible decision-making during a pandemic, which is partly the focus of this article. Another theme I’d like to explore is the pessimistic tendency to try to do away with rose-tinted glasses and face up to harsh realities, which, I will argue, is another potentially beneficial outlook to adopt during a pandemic.

A more pessimistic view of the current pandemic – despite the mental discomfort it may cause – is, I believe, the most protective strategy we have. Realistic pessimism or rational pessimism – interpreted as clarified vision, as freedom from optimistic biases – is what we need to ensure that a future pandemic is prevented, rather than simply managed when it occurs.

The Psychological Responses to a Pandemic

David Benatar, a professor of philosophy and head of the bioethics centre at the University of Capetown, is interested in exposing the optimistic biases that shield us from seeing the badness of the world in its completeness. He believes doing so is not only valuable in terms of intellectual honesty; it has important practical implications as well. As he writes in The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (2017), “[pessimism] is sensitive to the vast amounts of suffering in the world,” and it is from this sensitivity that many pessimists decide to prioritise the prevention, minimisation, and alleviation of suffering, seeing this as a far more pressing matter than increasing happiness in the world. The danger of being somewhat desensitised to the pandemic, as a result of an optimism filter, is that we may not act as urgently and sensibly as we probably should.

In Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence (2006), Benatar lays out his defence of antinatalism (the view that it is morally wrong to procreate), and in doing so, tries to explicate the various psychological phenomena that distort our self-assessments of the quality of life. I have written before on the first such bias identified by Benatar: the optimism bias (also known as the positivity bias or Pollyanna principle). It stands for our tendency to have a rosy view of the world. As a result of this bias, we tend to remember positive experiences more accurately than negative experiences, we expect the future to turn out better than it usually does, and we overestimate our abilities or the level of control we have over our environment. The danger of such a bias in a post-pandemic world is that we may lose the insight of accurate hindsight, which can provide us with ample motivation to prevent yet another pandemic. Being overly optimistic about the future or our capabilities, while in the midst of a pandemic or after it, can similarly hinder our better judgement.

The second psychological phenomenon is adaptation (which we can also refer to as adjustment, accommodation, or habituation): the tendency we have to adapt to new negative situations and adjust our expectations accordingly. So, if our lives change for the worse, say, as a result of a pandemic, we adjust to life during the pandemic. The pandemic becomes, as is commonly said, the ‘new normal’. But where lies the problem in this way of thinking? Isn’t adjustment like a stoic acceptance of the bare facts, helping us to solider on when the going gets tough? On the one hand, adaptation has utility, but from another perspective, its normalising effect means we are at risk of failing to fully appreciate just how negative the change has been. In our adjustment to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, we can forget the true contrast between pre-pandemic life and pandemic/post-pandemic life.

The third tendency that can make our assessment of the pandemic unreliable is comparison (or relativism): the process whereby we assess the quality of our lives based on comparison with the lives of others. Through this comparison, we fail to take into account the negative aspects of life that affect everyone, as these become a kind of baseline, a given, and almost neutralised in the process. Since we are all living through the pandemic (although some countries are more affected than others), comparison can make us somewhat blind to just how negative the shared disruptions are, such as restricted freedoms, reduced social contact, and increased fear, which leads us to bemoan only the most unusually disruptive effects of the virus: direct and indirect effects, such as oneself or one’s loved ones becoming severely ill or dying, long-term unemployment, debt, poverty, or acute mental illness. In a pandemic, we may also be more likely to compare ourselves with those who are worse off, as this is a common way that we console ourselves in times of hardship. But this consolatory strategy of saying ‘it could be worse’ can mean that we fail to see clearly just how bad the new situation is.

Benatar accepts that “the above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective,” as he writes in Better Never to Have Been. These biases favour reproduction since those who have them will be more likely to see the world as a good home for children than those without these biases. And while we can easily imagine that these biases will help to sustain the continuation of the species, the pessimist would argue this is not necessarily the case. These biases may make you happier, more motivated, more hopeful, and more likely to procreate during the pandemic compared to a pessimist, but realistic or rational pessimism is more protective, in a much larger sense. We need to be able to face the extent of the pandemic’s effects, humanity’s role in the pandemic, and the risk of further pandemics if we want to prevent another pandemic from taking place. Benatar, however, is not banking on people collectively waking up to these realities.

The Benefits of Hard Truths Over Comforting Illusions

Benatar had this to say in an interview with City Press about the post-pandemic future:

I’m not optimistic. Humans are predictable. I wrote a paper in 2007 about the avian influenza outbreak and the inevitability of a similar pandemic. The conditions that motivated my writing are the same ones that have gotten us where we are today. It’s only a matter of time before this happens again.

The idea that once the pandemic is over we’re in the clear is delusional, that is, based on the assumption we make no changes to the conditions that make pandemics possible in the first place. The 2007 paper that Benatar refers to is ‘The Chickens Come Home to Roost’, published in the American Journal of Public Health, and in this paper, he makes the link between zoonotic diseases or zoonoses (diseases that spread between animals and people) and our mistreatment of animals. Benatar again made this argument in a widely read New York Times op-ed titled Our Cruel Treatment of Animals Led to the Coronavirus. And he’s not wrong. The likely source of COVID-19, the latest type of coronavirus, is the ‘wet’ markets of China, marketplaces selling fresh meat and fish. Benatar points out that the conditions that make these markets cruel are the same conditions that make them prone to creating and spreading zoonotic diseases. The animals live in cramped, filthy conditions and suffer from dehydration, starvation, and disease (including but not limited to zoonotic diseases). They are then butchered on-site, often brutally so and in an unregulated way. It is in these conditions that infections are easily transmitted from one animal to another. The markets are in close proximity to many people, which then makes transmission from animal to human easier as well.

In his 2007 paper and New York Times op-ed, Benatar underscores that most (and potentially all) infectious diseases are zoonotic in nature and that moreover, many zoonotic diseases arise due to animal cruelty. He illustrates this with various examples: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and some outbreaks of avian influenza (both attributable to China’s wet markets); human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which most likely had its source in simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV); and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which was likely caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or ‘mad cow disease’. In all these cases, the zoonoses have been linked to human consumption of infected non-human animals or exposure to infected parts of the butchered animals (such as blood, in the case of SIV, which began in non-human primates).

For Benatar, the current pandemic should come as no surprise, given the history of zoonotic diseases. He writes:

That there would be another pandemic was entirely predictable, even though the precise timing of its emergence and shape of its trajectory were not. And there is an important sense in which the pandemic is of our own making as humans. A pandemic may seem like an entirely natural disaster, but it is often – perhaps even usually – not.

Indeed, the most inhumane ways in which we treat animals – in wet markets and in factory farms – create the perfect storm for a pandemic to take place. We have suffered the consequences of zoonotic diseases time and time again, and we are experiencing these fearful effects again, but this time on a global and much more devastating scale. Many countries are in lockdown, over a million have died, countless are suffering long-term health impacts from the virus, and economies have gone into recession, resulting in abrupt hardships for many. The global toll on human well-being is not to be understated. But is this newest instance of a zoonotic disease and its harms enough to get people to address the cause of a pandemic? Benatar states: “In the future, we should fully expect our maltreatment of animals to wreak havoc on our own species.” The critical question, of course, is will we stop mistreating animals in order to prevent another pandemic from occurring?

The pessimist is likely to answer no to this question. We have known the causes of zoonotic diseases and been warned about them for many years, yet this has not led to the widespread adoption of veganism or the outlawing of cruel conditions that lead to the generation and spread of zoonoses. While veganism has been growing as a lifestyle choice in general, and in light of the coronavirus specifically, this is not primarily motivated by fear of zoonoses. Widespread rejection of factory-farmed animal products or the banning of factory farms would substantially reduce the chances of another pandemic – perhaps an even worse one – from occurring. Yet there is no reason to hope for people en masse or governments to make these changes. While an optimist may be hopeful for a pandemic-free future, a realistic pessimist will have to conclude that, based on our current trajectory of human behaviour, another pandemic is inevitable; it’s just a matter of when, as Benatar says. The pessimist will want to discard irrational hopes because it sets one up for disappointment.

It is also possible that optimists will be feeling a lot of unnecessary distress during this pandemic if they have the preconceived idea that an event like this should come as a surprise. A pandemic may fit more neatly into a pessimist’s worldview and therefore be less of a shock to the system when it happens (which isn’t to say, of course, it’s easy to handle, even for the most hardened pessimist). Another benefit of pessimism during the pandemic is that it may make you behave more sensibly, recognising yourself as a source of potential risk. An optimist, in contrast, may downplay – or even deny – such risks and act in without precautions. According to one study, which surveyed Polish students, unrealistic optimism about the risk of oneself – or others – becoming infected with coronavirus had a fairly general occurrence. The authors note it’s possible that “unrealistically optimistic people will behave much less in line with aforementioned recommendations [wearing masks, social distancing, and staying at home if infected] making coronavirus widely spreading.”

Benatar contends that “one of a number of crucial measures [for preventing pandemics] would be a more intelligent – and more compassionate – appraisal of our treatment of nonhuman animals, and concomitant action.” Pessimists do not want to shy away from suffering in the world; and by wanting to face it head-on, they will have to confront the mistreatment of non-human animals, including the ways in which our actions, as consumers, are contributing to this harm. This sensitivity to harm will naturally extend to humans as well, as there is no getting away from the link between the cruelty of factory farms and the risk they pose to humans in terms of life-altering pandemics. These facts – and rational responses to these facts – are seemingly being ignored by most people. But a pessimist is unlikely to be surprised by this, for the pessimist also has to deal with the problem of what I call meta-pessimism: since pessimism itself is such an unattractive worldview and contrary to our psychological biases, pessimists should expect most people to reject it. In this way, we can be pessimistic about pessimism itself.

A pessimistic take on the pandemic may seem insensitive and counterproductive. The 24-hour news cycle is already inundating us with death tolls and the various negative repercussions of the virus. Won’t pessimism just make people more miserable than they already are? It’s possible but not certain. After all, pessimism does not preclude states that enhance well-being, such as compassion, kindness, friendliness, and resiliency – in fact, pessimism may encourage those characteristics, given its sensitivity to suffering. In Benatar’s view, being insensitive when discussing the reality of the pandemic is a risk worth taking. As he concludes his op-ed:

Some might say that it is insensitive to highlight human responsibility for the current pandemic while we are in the midst of it. Isn’t it unseemly to rub our collective nose in this mess of our own making?…However, given the importance of what lies in the balance, it is better to risk a little purported insensitivity than to pass up an opportunity to encourage some positive change. Millions of lives and the avoidance of much suffering are at stake.

There may also be risks in thinking like a pessimist about the pandemic. There’s the risk of feeling overwhelmed by suffering, the risk of becoming unhappy and despondent, and the risk of becoming a misanthrope. While all possible, these risks aren’t inevitable. You can be a happy pessimist in the middle of this pandemic. But I would say, like Benatar, it is better to risk these outcomes than take the far greater risks of being an unrealistic optimist. Pessimists may generally be averse to the idea of hope, seeing it as a comforting illusion, useful for feeling better in oneself but useless for aligning one’s expectations with reality. Nevertheless, we should distinguish between rational and irrational hope. Irrational hope would be wanting or expecting pandemics to disappear without acknowledging or addressing their root causes, whereas rational hope would be the same desire and expectation, aligned with true preventive measures. We don’t have to discard hope in these pandemic times, or in post-pandemic times. But we can only hold onto hope, in a way that is rational, if we collectively act from a place of pessimism.