opinion: y2k taught us the value of a plan. we ignored it
we will have the blood on our hands of the many doctors and nurses who have fallen victim because of our inaction.
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we didn't pay attention to the lessons of y2k. stock/getty
as we deal with the unprecedented dislocations and horrors of the covid-19 pandemic, it’s only natural that we seek some guidance from other similar world-changing events. so we’re looking back at the sars epidemic of 2003, or the swine flu of 2009 — even the spanish flu that ravaged the world a century ago. but we’re forgetting, i think, another worldwide, viral event that may have some real lessons for us in these trying times.
the y2k panic.
remember y2k? that was “virus†that was going to completely destroy the computer-dependent world as several billion mainframe and laptop and pc computer clocks clicked over to january 1, 2000 simultaneously, the “00†date causing mass confusion in computer programs, and mass destruction everywhere else. because nothing actually happened on that fateful day, people nowadays think y2k was a joke or a hoax, completely forgotten as something that might teach us a thing or two about covid-19.
but y2k was no hoax.
talk to the millions of computer programmers worldwide who put in 18-hour days for months, labouring frantically to prevent computer programs — from the ones that regulated elevator maintenance to the ones that launched nuclear weapons — from malfunctioning on that otherwise peaceful day. the y2k fixes worked — and how they worked, and why, may have something to teach us about our current dilemma. both what we should do and shouldn’t do.
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i covered y2k quite extensively for the cbc in 1999, and one of the most striking things about the whole episode was the world’s complete lack of preparedness for this particular bug, despite plenty of advance notice —â somewhat like today.
the first papers in computer science journals predicting the impact of y2k appeared in 1988 — twelve years (!!!) before the event. by the early ’90s, it was clear, worldwide, that this was a real problem. and yet, nobody did anything — until well into 1999, when, all of a sudden, governments and businesses wasted billions of dollars in a panicked response to the possibility of a computer meltdown, a frantic and depressing expenditure of resources, and energy. sort of exactly what we’re witnessing today relative to the emergence of covid-19.
the similarity between the two situations gets worse. i remember vividly reading in the summer of 1999 an interview in wired magazine with an american ceo who was asked to account for the appalling show of incompetence on the part of american business in its dealings with y2k. you had all this time to fix this simply and effectively, he was told. instead you waited until the very last minute in a completely uncoordinated and irrational response. why?
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i’ll never forget what the ceo said — i think about it every day. it wasn’t incompetence, the executive responded. you’re missing the point. this is the way we do business — the way we have always done business. we ignore a problem as long as we can, then throw a ton of resources at it at the last minute, and it gets fixed. it’s not incompetence — it’s a business model. if i had started trying to fix the problem in 1988, i would have set up task forces, and committees, and international symposiums, spent a fortune, only to find that we were more or less in the same boat we found ourselves in early 1999, having done nothing. and i would still have had to spend extra billions. the crazy, uncoordinated, wasteful way we fixed y2k was actually the most efficient way.
so is that what we’re dealing with today with the coronavirus?â it certainly seems so. that business executive wasn’t, but certainly could have been, president donald trump. that’s why we’re reading stories today about pandemic plans left to fester, ventilator contracts canceled by rapacious corporations, people scrounging for masks in the corporate equivalent of their basements and attics, doctors using garbage bags as protective gear, testing kits woefully unavailable — another seeming irrational, tragic and completely unnecessary lack of preparation for something for which we had advance notice, notice we completely squandered. and it’s interesting to note how similar this lack of preparation has been worldwide — in highly centralized countries, in highly decentralized countries, in countries with universal healthcare, in countries without universal healthcare, in poor countries, in rich countries. everyone seems to be dealing with the virus in the same way — that is, terribly. is that y2k ceo, in his cynical honesty, telling us a truth about ourselves — that we are incapable, really, of planning for something on this scale?
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i say no. it is true that one of the most depressing aspects of this devastating virus has been our inability to rationally muster our defenses against it, to have had a plan that was ready to go — one that worked. just as we had no real plan for y2k in the spring of 1999. we have to do better, if for no other fact than otherwise we will have the blood on our hands, not so much of elderly men and women whose lives were cut short by a few years, as terrible as that is, but of the many doctors and nurses who have also fallen victim to the disease unnecessarily, because of our inaction.
we got lucky with y2k because we started fixing the problem before it appeared — just. with the coronavirus, we didn’t start until after the problem had already begun to devastatingly appear. so the lessons of y2k were wasted on us. we think it showed us how to defeat a worldwide, frighteningly unknown and unknowable problem. it did the opposite. it lulled us into a false sense of security, where my y2k ceo’s crazed, cynical, last minute response passes for a plan. it doesn’t. we must do better.
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robert harris is a freelance writer and broadcaster in toronto. when he was born, tv was still four years away from being introduced in north america. he didn’t go to woodstock, but he might have. and he owns real estate that has increased eight times in value since he purchased it in the 1980s.
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