Know Your Enemy

UNLOCKED: How the Pandemic Changed Everything (w/ David Wallace-Wells)

Apr 8, 2025

David Wallace-Wells, an Opinion writer at the New York Times and climate change expert, joins the discussion to reflect on how the pandemic has reshaped our world. He shares insights on the emotional aftermath of COVID-19, emphasizing the lingering trauma and societal divisions it has created. The conversation delves into urban versus rural pandemic responses and the shifting political landscape. Wallace-Wells also addresses the impact on youth perspectives and the importance of acknowledging these changes for healing and future resilience.

01:49:58

Creator website

Episode guests

David Wallace-Wells

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

The initial phase of the pandemic was marked by a deep collective fear and denial about the severity of Covid-19's impact.

Public perception of health measures shifted from initial support to a desire for normalcy, often downplaying their crucial role in virus mitigation.

Societal trauma from the pandemic remains largely unprocessed, exacerbating political divisions and preventing a unified national mourning for the lost lives.

Erosion of trust in public health authorities due to inconsistent messaging contributed to vaccine skepticism and ongoing challenges in public health communications.

Deep dives

Reflections on Early Pandemic Experiences

The initial weeks of the pandemic were characterized by fear and uncertainty as people navigated the rapid shift from normalcy to crisis. Many individuals, including those closely following scientific developments, struggled to internalize the growing seriousness of the situation, often remaining in a state of denial about the impending risks. Personal accounts from this period highlight the dissonance between rational understanding and emotional response, with some expressing a disconnect between acknowledging the severity of the threat and the realities of daily life. The collective experience of fear during this time reflects a struggle to reconcile personal grief with the overwhelming collective anxiety of a global pandemic.

Intro

2min

Pandemic Realities: A Deep Dive

25min

Pandemic Disparities: Urban vs Rural Responses

32min

Pandemic Reflections: Unity and Fragmentation

15min

The Controversy of School Closures: Politics and Consequences

5min

Understanding Pandemic Learning Loss in Context

2min

The Pandemic's Lasting Impact on Youth Perspectives and Political Identity

5min

Pandemic Closure and Public Trust

23min

In response to several requests from our (wonderful) Patreon subscribers, we're unlocking this episode from behind the paywall. Consider subscribing at Patreon.com/KnowYourEnemy to never miss an episode.

March 2025 marked five years since the formal start of the pandemic in the United States, when the federal government declared the arrival and spread of the novel coronavirus to be a national emergency. The official Covid death toll in the United States now stands at over 1.2 million; globally it surpasses 20 million people. Tens of millions of others were hospitalized, and many who survived infection are facing long Covid or related health complications. Our lives were upended, whether by sheltering-in-place, working from home, and barely leaving our home or apartment, or, for others, by endangering themselves by continuing to show up to work in hospitals, making deliveries, or staffing essential businesses. And yet, as David Wallace-Wells recently argued in the New York Times, "We tell ourselves we’ve moved on and hardly talk about the disease or all the people who died or the way the trauma and tumult have transformed us. But Covid changed everything around us."

We wanted to have a conversation with David about that reality: why, collectively, we resist acknowledging what Covid really cost us, and the ways it continues to shape our lives. The discussion begins by revisiting the first weeks and months of the pandemic, the fear we felt, and the remarkable displays of solidarity that occurred in blue states as well as red states. From there we explore the different "phases" of the pandemic, how public-health measures became culture-war fodder, the impact of the vaccine on how both the public and elected officials perceived the risks of Covid, the pandemic's profound influence on our politics, the fallout from school closures, the Lab Leak Theory, and more.

Listen again: "How to Survive a Pandemic" (w/ Peter Staley), Feb 21, 2021

Sources:

David Wallace-Wells, "How Covid Remade America," New York Times, Mar 4, 2025

— "The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else," New York Times, Feb 26, 2025

— "We’ve Been Talking About the Lab-Leak Hypothesis All Wrong," New York Times, Feb 28, 2023

— "Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong'," New York Times, April 24, 2023

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)

Nicholson Baker, "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis," New York Magazine, Jan 4, 2021

Zeynep Tufekci, "We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives," NYTimes, Mar 16, 2025.

Sam Adler-Bell, "Doctor Do-Little: The Case Against Anthony Fauci," The Drift, Jan 24, 2021

— "David Leonhardt: The Pandemic Interpreter," NYMag, Feb 24, 2022.

Jacqueline Rose, "To Die One’s Own Death," LRB, Nov 19, 2020.