The inescapable inadequacy of our COVID blame game

But something other than reformist zeal appears to be behind much of the blaming — something more like deflection.

Blaming a nonsentient and nonconscious entity like a virus for our woes isn’t very satisfying. The pain it inflicts on us isn’t intentional, and we can’t retaliate by inflicting our own physical or spiritual pain on the virus in return. I suspect that’s one important reason so many of us prefer to direct ire at our follow human beings for their failures, incompetence, and supposedly malign intentions instead.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that such blame is never more than partially deserved — and that the corollary of blaming others (the presumption that the pandemic would be going so much better if only the authorities would listen to me) is in nearly every case a kind of self-justifying delusion.

There’s no way that living through the deadliest pandemic in a century was ever going to be anything other than a horrible experience. Laying blame can’t change that a bit.