In the college literature courses I teach, I often advocate for students to use a “compare and contrast” structure for their papers. It’s easy–elementary, in fact–but also surprisingly complex. The simplistic format allows students to tease out the more complex nuances in the texts. As the professor, I’m always acutely aware that this format only allows them to scratch at the surface, but it does afford them a firm grasp of that surface. There’s always much, much more to the texts than they ever see, but they do get the most essential points.

Which is why I understand why “compare and contrast” is the format we’ve reached for to understand our current situation, especially in New York. Comparing Coronavirus to 9/11 is an easily executed way of wrapping our minds around what’s happening. For the things that are comparable, it affords us the comforting knowledge that we’ve experienced these things before and survived. For the things that contrast with our previous experience, the contrast allows us to see them more clearly, to put them in perspective, to focus our anxiety on them, as the real things beyond our experience and control.

As an academic, though, and as one who studies literature of 9/11, I know that “compare and contrast” falls woefully short of capturing the full scope of the experience. Take, for example, the attention given to emergency response to both crises. They’re easily comparable, because they involve the same people, the same settings. Comparing them reassures us that we are again doing all the right things: New York’s Office of the Medical Examiner is yet again deploying mobile morgues, as it did after 9/11, allowing us, in both situations, to treat the dead with dignity and individuality. Comparing the events also allows us to see the contrasts: in 9/11, ERs and hospital staff waited for an influx of patients that never came, while during COVID-19, those same people and spaces are overwhelmed with an influx of patients far greater than what was anticipated. After 9/11, there was a swarm of people volunteering to donate blood that was not in fact needed; during COVID-19, there isn’t enough blood to go around.

Little attention is given, though, to other aspects of the events, the more slippery ones that don’t neatly fit into the “compare and contrast” model. There’s something similar, for example, in how both events involve planes, and travel, and the failure of bureaucratic systems to keep the threat out of the country. There should have been stronger security checks before 9/11, more stringent screening of the terrorists and their baggage. There should have been stronger medical screening for Coronavirus, a more systematic deployment of tests for travelers arriving at airports, whether or not they displayed symptoms. But even in this situation, despite the apparent comparability, it’s not a neat comparison. 9/11 involved evil people, intent on committing harm, whereas COVID-19 involves innocent civilians, often unaware themselves of the danger they carried. The hijackers entered America intent on sowing death; those infected with Coronavirus often entered America so as to avoid it, fleeing the pandemic that had already spread elsewhere.

After 9/11, there was a deployment of patriotism and American symbols. It was an obvious response to an attack on our nation motivated by hatred of our institutions and our way of life. The Coronavirus is seeing the deployment of those same symbols. The Upper West Side brownstone I live in, as well as several other buildings on my block, is festooned in American flags and red, white, and blue banners. This patriotism in some ways makes sense, since adherence to a larger cause, and a larger community, is comforting, and this same symbolism did offer solace after 9/11. But in the Coronavirus context, patriotism also makes little sense. The virus isn’t attacking us because we’re American, and America is far from the only nation affected. In fact, we aren’t even going to solve this crisis by retreating into America, isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. We need all scientists, all doctors, no matter their country, to be working towards a vaccine. In this case, the “compare and contrast” model may not only be obscuring the larger story, but it may also be actively preventing the situation from being resolved, forcing us to see things through a narrow, incorrect perspective.

Similarly, one of the indelible images from 9/11 was President George W. Bush sitting for a full seven minutes after he had been informed that a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, continuing to read “The Pet Goat” to a classroom of second graders, as if nothing had happened. That federal, and specifically presidential, inertia is echoed by our current crisis: President Trump denying, for months, that America was affected, and stalling, even now, the federal response to the pandemic. But again, the comparison isn’t neat. Despite the egregiousness of Bush’s immediate response, there’s still a component of shock and disbelief. The delay was perhaps not so much callous as human, a simple attempt to process what was happening. Trump’s response, though, is entirely callous and self-motivated, prompted entirely by his own ego, his desire to brag about the continued success of the economy, his refusal to concede failure, and his desperation to clinch re-election.

All this to say that there are points of similarity between 9/11 and the current pandemic, especially in New York, which has been the most affected by both disasters. However, the “compare and contrast” model, while useful, has its limitations. The full scope of the Coronavirus, and its ultimate effect on our culture and society, has yet to be seen. Those effects will almost certainly prove to be unique, utterly distinct from anything we have experienced before. The comparison to 9/11 may help to tease some of them out, and may even be shaping our response to the current crisis, but hopefully they will not obscure some of the more unique facets of the current moment, either.