<em>Social Distance</em>: We Can’t Go Back to Normal
Vann R. Newkirk II has spent a lot of time thinking about disasters. Three years ago, the Atlantic staff writer was on the ground in Puerto Rico covering Hurricane Maria and its political fallout. He spent the past year reporting Floodlines, an eight-part documentary podcast covering the unequal toll Hurricane Katrina took on the residents of New Orleans.
Newkirk noticed a pattern after both events—the desire to return to normalcy, to the way things were before. It’s a pattern he sees emerging in this moment, too.
On this episode of the podcast Social Distance, Vann joins Katherine Wells and James Hamblin to explore what the legacy of the coronavirus pandemic might be—and how its effects will be molded by how the world looks right now.
What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.
Listen to the episode here:
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Many people are referencing Katrina right now, sometimes by calling this Trump’s Katrina. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio last week said that thisI’ve never been super gung ho about the “Blank’s Katrina” formulation. I have a bit of a problem with people calling this Trump’s Katrina, because I was [in Puerto Rico] in the days after Maria, hearing people echo the same things that people said during Katrina. If this is his Katrina, what was that?
