ON "60 MINUTES": HOW COULD THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CHANGE THE WORLD?

Past Pandemics Have Played a Critical Role in Shaping Civilization

The present is shaped by the past. Prior pandemics have played a critical role in molding the way humans live, and the current coronavirus pandemic will be no exception. Jon Wertheim takes a look at some of the possible changes in store on the next edition of 60 MINUTES Sunday, May 17 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The way society is dealing with the pandemic today has its origins in past plagues, says Frank Snowden, a professor emeritus of history at Yale and author of Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. "They had quarantine. They had social distancing... lockdowns. Doctors actually wore PPE. And what they had was a mask. We know about that. Theirs was differently shaped. It had a long beak. And they put sweet-smelling herbs in it to keep the foul odors away," he tells Wertheim.

The plagues led to modern ways of life, now basic to society, says Snowden, "They introduced sewer systems, toilets... set housing regulations, paved streets. So the hygiene of modern cities that we see today was built, in large part, on the sanitary measures that grew out of the terrible experience of Asiatic cholera."

Changes to come from this pandemic may include new health care initiatives to remedy the failure of society to be prepared for the coronavirus and its disproportionate rate of infection and death among the poor. Different places and different ages have experienced the horror of the virus in different ways. An entire generation of students sit in a kind of virtual detention, unsure when and how they will graduate or restart school.

Renowned Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote a defining account on the COVID-19 crisis, has some analogies. "Right now it feels as though we have no present. We have a past. And we have a future. And right now we're in some sort of transit lounge," she says. "We should not be trying to stitch them together without thinking about that rupture. I think the most profound thing is the rupture of the idea of touch, the idea of proximity. All these things will become so laden with risk and fear for a long, long time."

Speaking to Wertheim from Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities, she describes the blue skies the city's lockdown has brought, on account of fewer emissions. That is encouragement to environmentalist Bill McKibben. "Flatten another curve. Flatten the carbon curve too... if we did that, then people might look back in 50 years at this time and thank us, instead of curse us," he tells Wertheim.

The dominant economic model of society is being tested by the pandemic, says McKibben. "We've spent the last 75-100 years really fixated in our country, and increasingly around the world, on economic growth as the reason for all being," McKibben says. "And... at least for a while, that worked out pretty well. A lot of people were pulled out of poverty. But we've begun to sense the limits of that too. That's why the temperature keeps rising," he says.

McKibben says it would be foolish to waste this crisis. "Well, what choice does one have, really, in a crisis but to try and make something useful of it? I mean, the dumbest thing to do would just be to set up all the pins in the bowling alley one more time exactly the same way," he tells Wertheim.

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