Katrina/COVID


KATRINA / COVID-19

As the author of THE KATRINA PAPERS (2008), I have vested interest in noting remarkable differences between the genre that emerged from Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, and the Flood (2005) and the one currently emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.  The agony of the COVID crisis far exceeds the anxiety sponsored by Katrina.  Why? Because the area and extent of damage is greater.  It is a reasonable guess that Katrina was responsible for  approximately  1, 833 deaths (approximately 1,000 in New Orleans ); $125 billion in property loss; the hardest hit areas were the South (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia plus Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, and New York.  Tragedy was confined to the USA. By contrast,  COVID -19 is a global pandemic---649, 000 deaths to date and economic costs that defy estimation.  Tragedy in the case of COVID is globally democratic.

Most Katrina narratives focused on an act of nature, which is legally defined as "an act occasioned  exclusively by forces of nature without the interference of any human agency" (Black's Law Dictionary).  COVID-19 narratives, despite a Pennsylvania Supreme Court classification of the pandemic as a natural disaster,  will focus greatly on human agency, on the anthropocene or the human impact on climate, ecology, and Earth's geology.   Neither Katrina nor COVID is absolutely natural, but COVID more absurdly and ironically natural given centuries of poor and/or vicious human choices.  That COVID is an act of humanity escapes debate.  The obligation to admit complicity is existential.  It is particularly existential in the USA, where the fascist motives that drive systemic racism and the amoral features of raw capitalism become increasing apparent.

The COVID narratives will be far more psychological  and political than any devoted to Katrina.  And readers , especially those shrouded in sweet visions of faith, hope and charity, shall recognize they are neither innocent nor immune to the taste of how profoundly bitter life actually is.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            July 27, 2020

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