Halloween is over; Christmas beckons. “Monster Mash” is out; “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is in. Feel-good movies have replaced seasonal zombie and vampire flicks. In the U.S., our real-life zombie movie is called COVID-19, and it has caused more than 1 million deaths. Along with that, there have been hundreds of thousands of non-COVID-19 excess deaths, and the number of people with long-term disabilities from COVID-19 may top off at a million or more. But no zombie apocalypse movie could imagine the profound long-term devastation COVID-19 might eventually do to American society on so many fronts.
The most immediate COVID-19 effect has been on K-12 education. In a trend that is unlikely to reverse anytime soon, math and reading scores for fourth and eighth graders have declined significantly in nearly every state, coincident with the pandemic. High school students also had falling ACT scores, exacerbating a decline that predated the pandemic. Deterioration in academic performance has been most dramatic in children who were performing poorly before COVID-19. The implications for American competitiveness are obvious, and we reinforcing a two-tier educational system. An overhaul of our teaching methods, remote and in-person, should be a top national priority.
The American economy appears to be rebounding somewhat from the economic shock of the first two years of the pandemic, but adjusted consumer prices are at their highest level in 40 years, the result of a number of factors, some of which are clearly pandemic-related. The current inflation rate is between 8% and 9%, and while the outcome of the inflationary pressure is impossible to predict, there is a chance the economy could be crippled for the rest of this decade.
