I saw this last night and I had to think about it before I commented.
(1) Yes, there are people who can't stand to see the pandemic end, though how many there are and how many others are just enabling them because they don't want to be accused of being insensitive or not appropriately cautious or wanting Granny to die, I don't know. But between those two groups, it's a large enough share of the population to make all our lives miserable.
As for the second, I think the "theory" is multifaceted and has to do with a few things, outside of the obvious, which is certain people have gained immense amounts of power through this and it's an easy "if it bleeds--or gasps--it leads" for the media:
(A) We cannot deal with aging, illness, and death. It's not that we necessarily look down on people who are experiencing those, but we do try to hide them away. As a personal matter, the idea that we are going to age, we are going to be ill, and, yes, we are going to die is something people can't wrap their heads around. They will do anything to avoid it, including giving up their lives and hiding, so basically exchanging living for surviving. I chalk a lot of this up to our culture's emphasis on youth and the fact that we no longer are intimately involved with extended family. We prefer to put our elderly in assisted care or nursing homes than to bring them into ours and watch their lives end and realize that's where we all end up, and it's just nature, but even age, illness, and death can be important stages.
(B) People *need* purpose. If they can't find purpose, they will make purpose, in healthy ways and unhealthy ways. We used to find purpose through the simple act of surviving from day to day (scratching a living from the dirt) or religion. But religion is losing its value, and most people no longer have to struggle to survive (think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). In an effort to find purpose and make life meaningful, people give outside meaning to otherwise meaningless things, like COVID, and lose the ability to do a rational cost-benefit analysis. Many of us work meaningless jobs, just a warm body, we're not close to our families, we don't build up large groups of friends like we used to, and most of us don't even have large extended families. We just have our jobs, our TV, and our social media. Enter COVID to bring our purpose back--an illusion of "just surviving" that takes us back to our digging in the dirt and avoiding the predators days.
(C) It's become a religion for some people. I don't know how to say it any better than that. The "saved" are the ones who follow the rules, worship the CDC and Fauci, and are willing to sacrifice anything to save even one elderly person who is already dying of ten other things and the "damned" who aren't willing to sacrifice the education of the local children to save themselves, even though they themselves are elderly. This goes back to B but it also ties into D.
(D) We live in a strange culture that values fear and victimhood. We could talk about this for hours, but look around you. Just one example, we made elderly people die alone without the company of young people who had less of a chance of succumbing to COVID than being blinded by their own tears and walking out in front of a bus. And we *valued* that. We saw that as making a valiant sacrifice. It wasn't. It was cruelty of a repulsive nature, but very few pointed it out. But you can also see this in the reaction to "good news." I mean, you have to go to "crazy right wing" sites to actually see that Omicron isn't that deadly or that natural immunity works or that *gasp* even in the early days not everyone who was exposed to COVID got it. These were all good news, but you were evil if you pointed it out because we value fear.
(E) This has less to do with people and more to do with our medical system. Our medical system, bar none, is the most expensive in the world, and even before COVID it was inept. Everyone has at least one "war" story of dealing with it. Hospitals are chronically short staffed, doctors are chronically over worked, and patients are chronically ill-served, and underneath it all is greed and corruption that goes unchecked because, well, everyone wants to live and feel good (even if not be healthy, which are two different things) and you can kill as many customers as you like because there will always be more. In 2017, Johns Hopkins did a study and they decided that in any given year between 250K and 500K people die as a result of medical malpractice, most of it misdiagnosis. I remember New York hospitals being strained during the flu season. One of our own local hospitals routinely runs out of beds in the same season, and we're a hub of two large systems. The medical industry (Big Pharma, Big Med, etc.) sucks money like a vacuum and offers not even consistent competency in return, and no one--and I mean *no one*--tries to make it accountable. Look at ObamaCare. What did it do? Go through and eliminate the waste in the medical system, focus on preventative care and diet, set up programs to train more doctors and nurses and break the strangle hold higher ed has on entry into that class? Did it look at tort reform or patent laws to alleviate the costs of medicine and procedures? Nope, none of that. What did it do? Make everyone buy insurance and the taxpayers foot the bill for those who couldn't afford to pay into this giant abyss of fiscal waste and greed. COVID would not have been a problem had our medical system been worth what we pay for it, but it's not, and the last thing they want you to do is notice that, so they have a vested interest in keeping the "pandemic" going and they have an outsized influence in the media and politics.
Those are the five reasons I have. I'm sure others can pinpoint more.
I'd also encourage you to look of a Dr. Robert Malone and his talks on "mass formation psychosis." You may have already heard of him, but it's worth a listen.
I may have a helpful perspective on this, as my wife is a writer and is on one of those women writers group lists/chats (mostly journalists and novelists and screenwriters, many of whom are well known, all of them living in NYC/LA/SF).
The first thing to note is that the Covid freakout follows on the Trump freakout (both of which were intensified by the Floyd freakout).
Something possibly historically unprecedented (if that is poss) happened to the upscale-urban-liberal thinking class when Trump beat Hillary: it seemed like literally overnight every person we knew who used to be a cynical Big City libertine was transformed into a neurotic scolding dogmatic raging Puritan whose entire purpose in life was now the complete destruction of Trump, the Republicans, and all their voters (well, that and policing thought and demonizing heretics). Team Blue (esp its most fervent believers) has basically been undergoing a single nonstop monumental nervous breakdown since Nov 2016.
So to get to your questions:
When I listen in on these writers' chats, the level of COVID terror is both bizarre and hilarious/disturbing. If you just woke up from a 2-yr coma you would think they were describing the Black Plague. And listening to them discuss Omicron, you would think that Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker was just spotted on the block.
So my answer to question 1 is YES, not only do I perceive it, but from my perspective, I just don't see this ending anytime soon and I'm not quite sure what can break this fever, maybe either Trump dying or a massive Republican landslide. COVID now is another battle in the Culture War, so if they can't destroy their opponents and have them banished from society, there will have to be some way for them to back down and save face.
As for question 2, some more guesses at the causes:
It seems that Team Blue is addicted to fear, enjoys being addicted to fear, their fear makes them feel righteous and a much better person than the non-fearful, and their entire lives are about neurotically signalling all the proper beliefs.
Also, Twitter has turned the blue-check caste into perpetual raging toddlers who throw a tantrum whenever they don't get their way, and (this might be the root) they really deeply believe that their degrees, hipness, literary and culinary tastes, fancy jobs, and most of all their obviously bulletproof and superior morality gives them the divine right to tell the rest of us what to do, how to live, think, etc etc.
So I wouldn't get my hopes up about this hysteria fading anytime soon--but hopefully I'm wrong!
I work in higher ed and I noticed that transformation when Trump was elected. The day after the 16 election I went to my office in the morning before my first class; I heard screams coming from the hallway where a colleague (who, up to this point, had been shy and reserved) screamed to another colleague something about “the end of democracy”. That was my first sight of early onset Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I think you are accurate in your perceptions about the fear pandemic that accompanied Trump's election. Something in that threatened foundational beliefs of those who were next heard to scream the loudest. It was not conceivable that someone like Trump could win. Just unthinkable. And just as that started to wane, the invisible source of all fear shifted from imaginings about Trump (consider if he really had had all the qualities and powers ascribed to him!) to imaginings about an invisible, imperceptible disease that could infect all and kill many. This latter was the surfacing of unconscious fears, collective and individual, plain and simple.
But what is, as Ms. Harris says, the "root cause" of all this anxiety? That is the better question, yet no one is attending to it with any degree of seriousness.
With or without due concern for the nation's psychological dis-ease, though, it is hard to deny that any gauze of "all right-ness" that enveloped the country no longer provides much by way of protection against the country's wounds.
I agree, it's like their brains broke with the 2016 election and they never recovered. COVID seemed more frightening because they had already been panicking for 3+ years and it fed right into the narrative they had fed themselves.
I have a friend who had the self reflection to actually verbalize her reasons, although she may not be representative of the majority. Her and her family are basically introverts anyway, so staying home in pajamas and ordering in while watching movies and working over Zoom is like heaven to her. Her pay remained the same plus they got stimulus checks, so she's making more money for less effort. Her social life consisted of social media for the most part anyway, outside of our monthly game night, and now that wasn't considered sad but normal. She's felt stuck and without meaning for awhile but now life was exciting. They were brave crusaders living through a historic pandemic!
Now that it's ending she has to go back to her sh&*y job, commute, make less money, seem sad for having no social life, and also no more exiting narrative to backdrop it all. She's just a middle age, tired, women stuck in a mediocre job/marriage not really living up to social standards living in average times.
I know which world I'd prefer to live in if I were her.
I think she is representative, actually. I've read more than one article addressing this. I'm an introvert, so I understand her. But I see this as a problem with how we treat employees and our culture. There's many lessons we could have taken from this whole experience, and it gave us an opportunity to address some ills that affect everyone, but somehow the only thing most people latched on to was "be scared."
Yes i know some of these people too but they can’t expect the world to follow and how selfish it would be if they did. The extroverts are suffering and need human connections, hugs, smiles. How dare these people be so selfish.
Neurasthenic mob rule. World ending with a whimper, indeed. Too many "educated" people--for two generations now--have had absolutely meaningless jobs they pretended were careers and far too many women got what they said they wanted--soft caring vulnerable men who now bore them to frantic tears. This is the most excitement they've ever had in their lives and it ain't so thrilling, but it gotta do...
Similar to how the alt-right and antifa give each other's lives meaning by confirming one another's shared fantasy that civilization is coming to an end and only they can save us.
Those feudal fiefdoms were sure onto something, culling the excess population of knuckleheads with endless mini-wars. As sports hooliganism shows, them clever substitutes for actual battle don't actually eliminate actual battle...
FYI: I really enjoy your writing. Found you via publicly-available Twitter feeds (probably Glenn Greenwald's or Zaid Jilani's--and really glad I did. (Something of value has evidently come from the time I waste on my darling laptop reading so much nonsense...). Don't mind that I've only signed up for a free subscription--impoverished gentlewoman 'n all that. It ain't a reflection of what I think the value is...
Thank you so much for reading! And yeah, no shame whatsoever in the free subscription — I'll make a point of unlocking most of my posts so you can eventually read them in full regardless.
You and all writers are more than entitled to charge for the fruits of your intellect. (But yeah--I do really want to read that black culture/Scotch-Irish connection as soon as ever I can. Had been thinking along those lines myself...)
Yes! Found the black culture/Scotch-Irish connection quite interesting and wonder if this explains--since I have a bit of Scotch-Irish in me--that I liked the diversity in my Mills College area when my kids went to grammar school there!
Don't underestimate the degree to which a "crisis" gives people license to be abusive and cruel. I'm not screaming at strangers on the street and on the Internet that they're all pieces of shit who should drop dead, I'm...screaming at strangers on the street and on the Internet that they're all pieces of shit who should drop dead because I'm HELPING. Is it my fault that I care so much?
Spend ten minutes on Nextdoor.
In my small town and in my family, the people who have always been a little abusive, a little nasty, have spent the last two years taking a flamethrower to people who don't comply. WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING MASK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!?!?!?
Imagine how good that feels, if that's what you like to do to other people. It's pure pleasure – why would they want to stop?
Adding that I was in a bakery in Los Angeles when a woman walked in without a mask, maybe three months ago. She said that she had lost her mask, and did they have one that she could use? They responded by screaming abuse at her: "GET THE FUCK OUT, YOU BITCH!"
You can't do that to customers at work. Ahhh, but in a PANDEMIC....
It's a get-out-of-jail-free card for social abuse.
Yes, my mother lives on a house on a hill, sitting above lots of other houses, in California. She literally sits on her porch with binoculars and calls the cops on anyone she sees outside without a mask during the mnadates. Because she cares of course. Just doing her part to heroically keep the community safe!
I serve as a moderator on NextDoor and, by and large, can confirm. People go on tirades against each other and certain people get targeted repeatedly, notwithstanding that the targets pop back up after each punch. Mostly the jibes are about (who would have guessed) perceived racism and Karen-ism.
Just for the record, which matters not at all in an anonymous setting such as this, I do not approach reports of posts from the vantage point of thinking that suppression is desirable. Reports may be based on real objections or they may be based on someone saying something that was disliked or disagreed with. Absent statements that are pure personal attacks or transparently bigoted, I tend to let posters play among themselves or suggest counseling a poster rather than voting for removal outright.
1) Yes, with some reservations. I think people who are all in Covidians (as I call them) basically want to be told what to think. That and they do not know how to admit they might have been wrong all along about any number of things, from lockdowns, to masks, to the vaccine. They just don't have any idea how to walk any of that back because, as has been noted, if you get somewhere without using reason it is impossible to reason your way out. And, 2) I think my initial response answers number 2, though, there is an underlying tension that relates to the unworthy and existed before Covid: those deplorables who voted for Trump and don't believe in science must be punished/banished/excoriated. There seems to be a subconscious desire by many (in North Berkeley, for example) to sadistically punish that imagined population.
Doubt my responses leave much room for debate but I thought, what the heck, someone might get something from my words. I never thought that any measures could be taken to stop the spread of the virus and that the right thing to do was to protect, or try to protect, the most vulnerable.
just shared that with my dad, who raised me in n. berkeley, but was himself raised in missouri and was the first in our family to go to college. he'll like it.
As someone who has a ton of family in North Berkeley (top of The Alameda, way past Solano) I would venture a guess that this is also tied into the environmental movement., and how that is not received as warmly as many would like it to be in other parts of the country.
if people in n. bekeley don't like strip malls and destitute neighborhoods i agree with them for the sake of the environmental movement. if they think they don't consume as much (i.e. finite resources) they have their heads way the hell up their arses. (i mean, i only fly to europe once every two years, but hey. from what i have heard one rt bt sfo and paris is the equivalent to the average amount of energy use of one average human being for one lifetime). i understand the distaste for the ways people treat the ecology and the natural environment--it sickens me--but really one can only change their behavior patterns. i am completely over the nimbyism and i actually just clown these fools virtue signaling all day and night. i have become quite jaded over the last 5-6 years. one question i have that relates to the environmental movement, for anyone on here, has to do with the amount of energy running the internet takes. i have never seen a good study on that. i bet it takes like...quite a bit. (i grew up up the arlington from the top of solano in a beautiful little house with a creek. how i miss running around that backyard).
Yes, I agree there's a bit of sunk costs fallacies going on here for some. The vaccines in particuar were sold like MMR vaccines. You take them, you don't get sick, and you stop the virus. Like measles. Instead these are really short term experimental gene therapies. They reduce your symptoms for a limited amount of time for one strain only. For people who look to the government to be a wise leader, the reality that they were lied to is too much. Better to double down and attack the messenger. Hence the push for vaccine mandates at a time when highly vaccinated populations are coming down with Covid in record numbers. Right when we see the limitations of the vaccines doubling down makes no sense, unless as you said, reason was never the guiding principle anyway.
Also, I have a few family members who are super self righteous and entitled and that are LOVING calling the cops on all of their maskless neighbors and basically acting like Covid gestapos and they do NOT want this party to end. Sad, but true.
Because, and I'm surprised I have to keep repeating this, the safety or efficacy of the vaccines is not Greenwald's or Taibbi's or Leighton's beat. These people cover political messaging and media, not science and medical policy.
2. For many people, the pandemic is (was, heh heh) the biggest thing in their lives, for a variety of reasons:
a) Virologists and epidemiologists have never before been so important, have never before received phone calls and e-mail from the media. When the pandemic ends so will all this attention. So it is no surprise many of these people (scientists are people too, though this would apparently surprise the witless humanities graduates in the media) spent the last 18 months exaggerating the effects of the virus and thus their own importance; and it is no surprise they don't want this to end.
b) The media want clicks, and nothing besides wars and Trump gives them clicks like Covid. My news feed is all COVID all the time. What will they do for clicks when the pandemic peters out?
c) As I said above, this is the biggest thing ever to happen in many people's lives. Fretting over the pandemic, publicly masking up and tweeting about their vaccination jabs, it gave millions of people meaning for otherwise drab lives. Except that almost everyone had friends and loved ones in very serious mortal danger, I bet there were more than a few Americans who didn't want WWII to end, for the same reasons.
d) The Nazis demonstrated how powerful a social and political sentiment is to define and vilify the Other. With the unvaccinated, we have a modern Other that clearly too many people find pleasure in persecuting. The sort of person who enjoys the endorphin boost he gets from openly hating unvaccinated people will never want that to stop.
e) The COVID Industry obviously never wants this to end. I don't just mean Big Pharma (though they will be the biggest losers from a return to normalcy), but the cottage industry of COVID consulting and related commerce, plus the politically connected firms that have benefited most from the showering of taxpayer dollars onto the economy will also try to keep this going as long as possible. Matt Taibbi says he's writing a book about this. The Homeless Industry has the same incentives, that it would be destroyed if we ever actually, you know, solved homelessness (the $40K+ per homeless person San Francisco spends annually on "homelessness" certainly isn't being paid to the homeless themselves).
f) The control freaks and professional nannies at all levels of government have never had it so good.
Anyway, yes, according to what I've been seeing (outside the mass media) for the last month and a half, Omicron signals the end of the (medical, if not political) pandemic. This has been indicated for more than a month, and every week's numbers make it more likely.
I'm spending a week at a trade show in Vegas this month, if it doesn't get cancelled. I have every expectation of coming home with omicron. It's no big deal.
I think Holly the Math Nerd gets it right. She claimed in a recent piece that the split between Americans is best described as those that trust our government institutions and those that don't. I have a pretty even distribution of friends and family politicially and I see this in most issues. Concerning Covid, those on the left trust Fauci, the CDC, the NIH, etc and don't question them. They don't dig on their own like many of us do. CDC says wear a mask so they wear a mask. For me I wondered what the CDC was basing that advice on and found out it's a handful of observational studies and that they downplay the many RCT studies saying the opposite. I mention this to my friends on the left (typically the ones that trust our institutions) and they pretty much think I'm akin to an anti vaxxer (I'm boosted, BTW) - how could the CDC be wrong? Scott Atlas will tell you how, but of course he's a heretic!
So I think it's complete trust in our institutions and the associated "culture" that comes with those that do. Mush those together and you have a religion. Bottom line that's the only way this makes sense to me. It's simply a religion that dogmatically goes against everything the "other" side believes. Going back to my earlier comment, if the other side is starting to question masks, they reflexively double down. If the other side thinks Omicron could be the off ramp, they push back. And of course everytime they turn on CNN, MSNBC, or read the Post or Times, it's like going to church...
In addition to all of the other perceptive suggestions here, I think there's some amount of sunk-cost fallacy at work. I still remember how the initial phase of lockdowns and masks was predicated on the assumption that it might be possible to eliminate COVID entirely. Two years on, if it's endemic and has evolved to be a nuisance rather than a danger, well, then we didn't win did we? We didn't defeat COVID, COVID defeated us, and I think for a certain type of person admitting that the pandemic is drawing to an end would be tantamount to admitting that all the neuroticism and hand-wringing and worry was for nothing. We have to keep going until we "win," otherwise what was the point?
Never underestimate the human need to feel important. COVID has given a lot of people ways to feel important, powerful, and superior. They won't give that up easily.
I was just saying this to a very liberal wine mom friend. Most parents in our school district seem quite content to keep masking our kids in schools indefinitely. No off ramps. Just keep doing it to “keep the community safe.” My viewpoint is that kids have paid a very high price. And with vaccines and treatments, let’s let them live! It seems to me that many are almost addicted to covid and the fear. I see some people in the medical field writing on FB pages their thoughts- it’s like they are revered in a way they weren’t previously and they like it. I also think that some people truly believe they don’t have a date with the virus- even tho I believe everyone will meet it one day. But for those who believe they can avoid it, they want others to “do their part” to slow the spread. Someone said it’s like a leaky faucet right now... and at some point, we need to just turn on the water to fill the glass (ie, reach endemic phase) rather than prolonging the process with the drip drip. Another thought, I remember when I was searching for a home in 2010, as much as I was stressed out at the time, I knew even while I was in the home searching process, I’d miss it when it was over. It was like a hobby. Maybe some people see covid avoidance as a hobby- and they need to find a new hobby. It also seems like this is a book for would be mini authoritarian types. They get to tell us what to do and virtue signal their moral superiority. And finally, there seems to be a lot of money tied up in this... from the school test and stay program (places like CHOP in Philly have big money tied to offering that plan to local, wealthy schools) or the covid protocol money hospitals get or the clicks that big media gets from covid fear. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And sadly, the group I think might help move things along, is the PMC bosses- like my company that owns a ton of real estate and wants us back in the office - to get the company culture up and going. Same for how the CDC shortened the quarantine period. Bc industries needed them to.
My Mom friends that are extraordinarily cautious about covid are on both ends of the political spectrum (I’m in a very diverse upper middle class part of suburbia). It feels good to keep your family safe. I don’t see any particular pattern of cognitive bias or education—some have a background in science, some don’t. It’s not merely where they are getting their information from. I think it is more of an addiction coupled with personality traits in that in 2019 they were correct in being risk averse and cautious and the first to mask up and got a corresponding dopamine hit, and further increases in dopamine and probably oxytocin. I think it will take them longer to come out of this, but how much longer I don’t know.
Edit: I’m trying to reconcile the negative tone of the comments here to people with the risk averse mindset of my friends and how they’ve taken care of their families, which is logical and a society needs people like them. I live in a mostly red state in a 50/50 partisan community so my friends made decisions for themselves, not necessarily imposed mandates on everyone else. They are not holding onto power or indignation, just doing what feels good because it has worked to keep their families safe. I don’t think it’s more complicated.
That’s great that your friends are politically diverse and that they do what is right for them, without expectation for others to act a certain way. If everyone was that way, that would be wonderful. Sadly, in my community, at least regarding restrictions on kids in schools, that is not the case. I honestly don’t know if my school board will allow us to go mask optional. Ever. And I am going to have make family decisions accordingly- like do I send them to private school? Which would require me to move because I can’t afford my neighborhood and private school.
That’s awful. I hope you have a large, articulate, and engaged parental community willing to fight for a de-escalation plan, and school board members up for re-election in November.
I’m trying to rally the troops, so to speak. We just had our SB election in Nov 2021- and all 4 SB members were elected as pro mask. They all luckily support schools staying open, but they are fully bought into that mask “science.” I’ve engaged as recently as Monday night- attending my first meeting and speaking. And also reached out to my newly elected rep on my points via email. She seems reasonable, but I have to persuade her, with Grace, to do some research on masks and the downsides. I asked her when kids can stop paying for the decisions of adults who chose not to be vaccinated? She said she “heard” me- and that’s a step. I need more people who are sitting back and hoping things will turn around without the intervention of the community. There are many who support the masks and many who are vocal against them are not making us look reasonable. The meeting Monday was switched to virtual bc one person refused to wear a mask at the podium when he was speaking. Another person was taken out by the police bc she was not respecting the meeting “decorum.” I don’t agree that the police intervention was necessary, or that the meeting should have been shut down bc of the man who wouldn’t don a mask, but when we are dealing with 9 SB reps - all of the same political party/tribe- we have to meet them where they are in order to build a credible case for what we want.
From my experience in advocating for my own issues, I’d probably keep it evidence based—learning losses, inequity to ESL students, speech issues in elementary, etc. I’d look at the districts written, on site or in policy, commitment to whole child health and go from there. Imo this is probably covid becoming endemic so you can probably concentrate on an ask of the district to define and commit to an off ramp, say when the positivity rate reaches below 4%, which imo might happen before Spring Break. I don’t know of a way to take this conversation off the comments but if you want me to read over an email or speech I’m happy to. Good luck.
If you asked the Covid Dead Enders if they want the pandemic to end, all would say they want it more than anything.I think people want the pandemic to end, they just want it to end on their terms. One of the worst things about the pandemic was how it became politicized. The blue state version of the pandemic end is the vaccine's prevented all transmission and we eventually get to herd immunity and Zero Covid. This is basically what we were promised and it's not going to happen based upon the fact that Israel is about 6 months ahead of us and shows what is going to happen next. Even as it becomes clear that Zero Covid is not possible, blue state people refuse to admit that they were wrong. Admitting lockdowns/vaccine mandates/universal masking didn't make a significant material difference means that red states were right and it may cost votes. Thus people want to the pandemic to continue forever or at least until the facts change and it ends the way they envisioned it ending.
I don't think this is limited to blue state people though. I think everybody has issues admitting they are wrong. If the coin flipped the other way, red state people would dig just as deep and refuse to admit the measures worked.
People telling you that you are wrong is akin to people telling you that you are stupid.
And that is the problem.
Indeed, that has been the problem about a whole host of things, from Trump winning (an outsider running on the idea that your whole worldview is wrong) to Brexit (the bumpkins not agreeing that your ideas of globalization are teh awesomez). Oh, hell, this is what populism is about the world over; that the so called elites, aren't. That they are bumbling around, not helping, only making fat bank for themselves and their tribe, while bankrupting everyone else, morally and financially.
I think this has become a religion for many people. While we joke about "Branch Covidians", there is a strong element of truth behind it. With more and more people losing touch with organized religion, they need something to replace it and give their lives meaning. Instead of signaling that you are a true believer by wearing a cross, they don their masks instead. Everyone who doesn't believe the words uttered by St. Fauci and his apostles are branded as heretics. The political element is also very strong as many Democrats (wrongly) believe everyone who is opposed to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and forced mask wearing must be an evil, Tump-worshiping cretin. They fear being labeled as being labeled as a Republican, anti-vaxxer, or COVID-denier if they don't toe the party line. It's going to be very difficult for some to let go of this.
As I see some others have said similar, I would agree that this drive to maximize covid is mainly driven by Trump Derangement, which at its root is just tribalism. I believe folks do it in good faith, but rather than coming from the proclaimed engagement with reality, maximizing covid is driven by reactionary politics and is now a proxy, a litmus test, to determine whose tribe you belong to - them or us. For the tribe we are talking about (which is the one I was raised in and until recently belonged to), maximizing covid simply signifies you are not a deplorable.
I believe strongly that if Trump had pushed for mandates and lockdowns, then all of this would be reversed and my leftish peers would be the ones screaming about civil rights, etc. Tribalism is the reason there is no room for complexity. Folks who are tribal simply cannot fathom that there are folks who are not and so being against madates can only he seen as anti-vax, etc. Covid mensheviks must be destroyed.
Its tribal, reactionary politics.
And just to be clear, those minimizing covid are every bit as tribal and reactionary.
1. I do see the pandemic winding down also. The arrival of Omicron confirmed what we were hoping for in terms of vira evolution: more contagious and less deadly. 2. I am also not sure as to why some people seem unwilling to let go of the pandemic panic. I think many people in power do not want to let go, because fear makes people easy to manipulate — plus, elected officials love their emergency powers. As far a regular folks go, I think that maybe a few factors are a) the cultural glorification of victimhood; COVID positive diagnosis can grant you oppressed status in certain circles and b) the sustained brainwashing by the MSM with the 24-hour fear porn cycle. I think some people are just addicted to the fear as a maladaptive response to the psychological manipulation of the last 24 month.
Those things have occurred to me, too, and I would add two more: 1. the pandemic maybe adds some End of Days romance and adventure to people's lives, 2. obsessing over just preventing infection is a welcome distraction from having to think about the complicated, vexing problems of normal life. Like it simplifies things — life is easier when all you have to think about is avoiding germs.
I have read some things about civilian life during WWII, especially during the Blitz and after Pearl Harbor on the west coast. There seems to have been a period of moral ambiguity, where one could do things that were normally socially frowned upon such as cheat on your husband, get high, etc. I think that might add a bit to the equation.
There is a class in America, the PMC, who has really benefited from this, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, most obviously financially, but also, I would be willing to bet, morally. Both in the self righteous sense of riding a high-horse, but also in the low sense, as witnessed by the the climate/covid modeler in England who was caught sneaking out of lockdown to sleep with his married girlfriend. Now, I am not trying to cast aspersions on others private lives, but I would venture a guess that there is a thrill of doing "naughty" things for a lot of people, and this was a great opportunity to act on these impulses. Think a preacher caught with a prostitute for an idea of this.
Interesting. And yet, reports have it that the birth rate post-March 2020 has dropped. Could it be that people have not been naughty enough? Or is access an issue?
For the unaware, what is this PMC of which many speak?
I agree with your post with the addition that I've recently seen quite a few people being ashamed of finally, after doing everything right, getting covid anyway...like *those* people
People do not want to let go because they’ve attached a sense of righteousness to their cautious behavior. In most other situations whether something is righteous or not does not evolve with a changing situation so we are not built to easily give up stances we have adopted out of righteousness.
I'm writing from New Zealand, where the pandemic terror has really taken off, aided and abetted by a hysterical media and a Prime Minister desperate to prove how well she has dealt with this challenge (mainly because she appears to have an eye on a seat at the UN head table).
When it all kicked off here, many friends and family behaved as if they were in a cult, worshipping a new and terrifying idol. Obeisance and compliance with the idol's demands had to be publicly demonstrated. The Facebook posts, the lockdown sourdough, the teddies in the window, the social media portrayal of brave families struggling together in Jacinda's "team of 5 million".
Then came the mask and vacc rites. Again, public demonstrations on social media. Immense public pride taken in curtain twitching and dobbing in your not so obedient neighbours. Facebook banners proclaiming how you're vacced for the team. Wearing masks at all times, in the outdoors, alone in your car. Parading your opinions that the unvacced should be rounded up and forcibly injected and all your fellow cultists going woo, yeah! Shut those borders!
That it's all proven to be somewhat of a damp squib is causing a huge fracture in the thinking of the cultists. The idol is vanishing in a puff of smoke and they feel cheated and bereft of their god. The not unnatural consequence is that they are desperately clinging on to the last of their beliefs and, no, they do not want this to end
I have to ask, because this sounds so precisely like the U.S. (we live in a global monoculture now): In New Zealand do they worship Dr. Fauci, too? Or is his saintly status limited to his home country?
He does get quoted and is viewed as a respected authority here. As Raymond has said, we have our own version.
Ours is a pink haired lady who was photographed maskless, on a beach with a maskless friend during a strict lockdown. The story was picked up by a notorious right wing blogger here who's been involved previously in some fairly shady goings on. The mainstream NZ press published pink hair's excuses which were the usual don't do as I do, do as I say farrago. The article by the right wing blogger got buried under a tsunami of ad hominem attacks and everyone went back to curtain twitching on the neighbours.
We also have the obligatory batshit crazy computer modeller (70,000 deaths!) but, unlike the UK one, he hasn't yet been caught breaking a lockdown to roger his mate's mrs.
I saw this last night and I had to think about it before I commented.
(1) Yes, there are people who can't stand to see the pandemic end, though how many there are and how many others are just enabling them because they don't want to be accused of being insensitive or not appropriately cautious or wanting Granny to die, I don't know. But between those two groups, it's a large enough share of the population to make all our lives miserable.
As for the second, I think the "theory" is multifaceted and has to do with a few things, outside of the obvious, which is certain people have gained immense amounts of power through this and it's an easy "if it bleeds--or gasps--it leads" for the media:
(A) We cannot deal with aging, illness, and death. It's not that we necessarily look down on people who are experiencing those, but we do try to hide them away. As a personal matter, the idea that we are going to age, we are going to be ill, and, yes, we are going to die is something people can't wrap their heads around. They will do anything to avoid it, including giving up their lives and hiding, so basically exchanging living for surviving. I chalk a lot of this up to our culture's emphasis on youth and the fact that we no longer are intimately involved with extended family. We prefer to put our elderly in assisted care or nursing homes than to bring them into ours and watch their lives end and realize that's where we all end up, and it's just nature, but even age, illness, and death can be important stages.
(B) People *need* purpose. If they can't find purpose, they will make purpose, in healthy ways and unhealthy ways. We used to find purpose through the simple act of surviving from day to day (scratching a living from the dirt) or religion. But religion is losing its value, and most people no longer have to struggle to survive (think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). In an effort to find purpose and make life meaningful, people give outside meaning to otherwise meaningless things, like COVID, and lose the ability to do a rational cost-benefit analysis. Many of us work meaningless jobs, just a warm body, we're not close to our families, we don't build up large groups of friends like we used to, and most of us don't even have large extended families. We just have our jobs, our TV, and our social media. Enter COVID to bring our purpose back--an illusion of "just surviving" that takes us back to our digging in the dirt and avoiding the predators days.
(C) It's become a religion for some people. I don't know how to say it any better than that. The "saved" are the ones who follow the rules, worship the CDC and Fauci, and are willing to sacrifice anything to save even one elderly person who is already dying of ten other things and the "damned" who aren't willing to sacrifice the education of the local children to save themselves, even though they themselves are elderly. This goes back to B but it also ties into D.
(D) We live in a strange culture that values fear and victimhood. We could talk about this for hours, but look around you. Just one example, we made elderly people die alone without the company of young people who had less of a chance of succumbing to COVID than being blinded by their own tears and walking out in front of a bus. And we *valued* that. We saw that as making a valiant sacrifice. It wasn't. It was cruelty of a repulsive nature, but very few pointed it out. But you can also see this in the reaction to "good news." I mean, you have to go to "crazy right wing" sites to actually see that Omicron isn't that deadly or that natural immunity works or that *gasp* even in the early days not everyone who was exposed to COVID got it. These were all good news, but you were evil if you pointed it out because we value fear.
(E) This has less to do with people and more to do with our medical system. Our medical system, bar none, is the most expensive in the world, and even before COVID it was inept. Everyone has at least one "war" story of dealing with it. Hospitals are chronically short staffed, doctors are chronically over worked, and patients are chronically ill-served, and underneath it all is greed and corruption that goes unchecked because, well, everyone wants to live and feel good (even if not be healthy, which are two different things) and you can kill as many customers as you like because there will always be more. In 2017, Johns Hopkins did a study and they decided that in any given year between 250K and 500K people die as a result of medical malpractice, most of it misdiagnosis. I remember New York hospitals being strained during the flu season. One of our own local hospitals routinely runs out of beds in the same season, and we're a hub of two large systems. The medical industry (Big Pharma, Big Med, etc.) sucks money like a vacuum and offers not even consistent competency in return, and no one--and I mean *no one*--tries to make it accountable. Look at ObamaCare. What did it do? Go through and eliminate the waste in the medical system, focus on preventative care and diet, set up programs to train more doctors and nurses and break the strangle hold higher ed has on entry into that class? Did it look at tort reform or patent laws to alleviate the costs of medicine and procedures? Nope, none of that. What did it do? Make everyone buy insurance and the taxpayers foot the bill for those who couldn't afford to pay into this giant abyss of fiscal waste and greed. COVID would not have been a problem had our medical system been worth what we pay for it, but it's not, and the last thing they want you to do is notice that, so they have a vested interest in keeping the "pandemic" going and they have an outsized influence in the media and politics.
Those are the five reasons I have. I'm sure others can pinpoint more.
I'd also encourage you to look of a Dr. Robert Malone and his talks on "mass formation psychosis." You may have already heard of him, but it's worth a listen.
A couple minor quibbles, but not worth a mention in reply.
Standing ovation!
Thanks for not quibbling. :-) I'll try to return the favor (the ego boost) someday.
A superb comment. Thank you!
Thank you for your SUPERB discussion of the relevant issues, Ms. Gajewski. Your relentless lucidity is much appreciated.
Holy cow! You hit all my nails on the head but one!
I may have a helpful perspective on this, as my wife is a writer and is on one of those women writers group lists/chats (mostly journalists and novelists and screenwriters, many of whom are well known, all of them living in NYC/LA/SF).
The first thing to note is that the Covid freakout follows on the Trump freakout (both of which were intensified by the Floyd freakout).
Something possibly historically unprecedented (if that is poss) happened to the upscale-urban-liberal thinking class when Trump beat Hillary: it seemed like literally overnight every person we knew who used to be a cynical Big City libertine was transformed into a neurotic scolding dogmatic raging Puritan whose entire purpose in life was now the complete destruction of Trump, the Republicans, and all their voters (well, that and policing thought and demonizing heretics). Team Blue (esp its most fervent believers) has basically been undergoing a single nonstop monumental nervous breakdown since Nov 2016.
So to get to your questions:
When I listen in on these writers' chats, the level of COVID terror is both bizarre and hilarious/disturbing. If you just woke up from a 2-yr coma you would think they were describing the Black Plague. And listening to them discuss Omicron, you would think that Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker was just spotted on the block.
So my answer to question 1 is YES, not only do I perceive it, but from my perspective, I just don't see this ending anytime soon and I'm not quite sure what can break this fever, maybe either Trump dying or a massive Republican landslide. COVID now is another battle in the Culture War, so if they can't destroy their opponents and have them banished from society, there will have to be some way for them to back down and save face.
As for question 2, some more guesses at the causes:
It seems that Team Blue is addicted to fear, enjoys being addicted to fear, their fear makes them feel righteous and a much better person than the non-fearful, and their entire lives are about neurotically signalling all the proper beliefs.
Also, Twitter has turned the blue-check caste into perpetual raging toddlers who throw a tantrum whenever they don't get their way, and (this might be the root) they really deeply believe that their degrees, hipness, literary and culinary tastes, fancy jobs, and most of all their obviously bulletproof and superior morality gives them the divine right to tell the rest of us what to do, how to live, think, etc etc.
So I wouldn't get my hopes up about this hysteria fading anytime soon--but hopefully I'm wrong!
I work in higher ed and I noticed that transformation when Trump was elected. The day after the 16 election I went to my office in the morning before my first class; I heard screams coming from the hallway where a colleague (who, up to this point, had been shy and reserved) screamed to another colleague something about “the end of democracy”. That was my first sight of early onset Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I work in higher ed too and the past five years have been absolutely crazy. Trump Derangement Syndrome followed by COVID Derangement Syndrome.
This is brilliant. How come your wife is a writer and you aren't?
Hey thanks! I'll be sure to tell her ;))
I think you are accurate in your perceptions about the fear pandemic that accompanied Trump's election. Something in that threatened foundational beliefs of those who were next heard to scream the loudest. It was not conceivable that someone like Trump could win. Just unthinkable. And just as that started to wane, the invisible source of all fear shifted from imaginings about Trump (consider if he really had had all the qualities and powers ascribed to him!) to imaginings about an invisible, imperceptible disease that could infect all and kill many. This latter was the surfacing of unconscious fears, collective and individual, plain and simple.
But what is, as Ms. Harris says, the "root cause" of all this anxiety? That is the better question, yet no one is attending to it with any degree of seriousness.
With or without due concern for the nation's psychological dis-ease, though, it is hard to deny that any gauze of "all right-ness" that enveloped the country no longer provides much by way of protection against the country's wounds.
I agree, it's like their brains broke with the 2016 election and they never recovered. COVID seemed more frightening because they had already been panicking for 3+ years and it fed right into the narrative they had fed themselves.
I think you nailed it Clever. I agree 100% and that has been my experience too.
I have a friend who had the self reflection to actually verbalize her reasons, although she may not be representative of the majority. Her and her family are basically introverts anyway, so staying home in pajamas and ordering in while watching movies and working over Zoom is like heaven to her. Her pay remained the same plus they got stimulus checks, so she's making more money for less effort. Her social life consisted of social media for the most part anyway, outside of our monthly game night, and now that wasn't considered sad but normal. She's felt stuck and without meaning for awhile but now life was exciting. They were brave crusaders living through a historic pandemic!
Now that it's ending she has to go back to her sh&*y job, commute, make less money, seem sad for having no social life, and also no more exiting narrative to backdrop it all. She's just a middle age, tired, women stuck in a mediocre job/marriage not really living up to social standards living in average times.
I know which world I'd prefer to live in if I were her.
I think she is representative, actually. I've read more than one article addressing this. I'm an introvert, so I understand her. But I see this as a problem with how we treat employees and our culture. There's many lessons we could have taken from this whole experience, and it gave us an opportunity to address some ills that affect everyone, but somehow the only thing most people latched on to was "be scared."
Yes i know some of these people too but they can’t expect the world to follow and how selfish it would be if they did. The extroverts are suffering and need human connections, hugs, smiles. How dare these people be so selfish.
Neurasthenic mob rule. World ending with a whimper, indeed. Too many "educated" people--for two generations now--have had absolutely meaningless jobs they pretended were careers and far too many women got what they said they wanted--soft caring vulnerable men who now bore them to frantic tears. This is the most excitement they've ever had in their lives and it ain't so thrilling, but it gotta do...
Similar to how the alt-right and antifa give each other's lives meaning by confirming one another's shared fantasy that civilization is coming to an end and only they can save us.
Those feudal fiefdoms were sure onto something, culling the excess population of knuckleheads with endless mini-wars. As sports hooliganism shows, them clever substitutes for actual battle don't actually eliminate actual battle...
FYI: I really enjoy your writing. Found you via publicly-available Twitter feeds (probably Glenn Greenwald's or Zaid Jilani's--and really glad I did. (Something of value has evidently come from the time I waste on my darling laptop reading so much nonsense...). Don't mind that I've only signed up for a free subscription--impoverished gentlewoman 'n all that. It ain't a reflection of what I think the value is...
Thank you so much for reading! And yeah, no shame whatsoever in the free subscription — I'll make a point of unlocking most of my posts so you can eventually read them in full regardless.
You and all writers are more than entitled to charge for the fruits of your intellect. (But yeah--I do really want to read that black culture/Scotch-Irish connection as soon as ever I can. Had been thinking along those lines myself...)
For the Black culture/Scotch-Irish, Thomas Sowell had a great book on that. Something with Redneck in the title.
Thanks--I just looked it up: Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
Yes! Found the black culture/Scotch-Irish connection quite interesting and wonder if this explains--since I have a bit of Scotch-Irish in me--that I liked the diversity in my Mills College area when my kids went to grammar school there!
I live like a mile from Mills!
Lol- hadn’t thought of it that way- but that aligns with my view below that people need a hobby!
Don't underestimate the degree to which a "crisis" gives people license to be abusive and cruel. I'm not screaming at strangers on the street and on the Internet that they're all pieces of shit who should drop dead, I'm...screaming at strangers on the street and on the Internet that they're all pieces of shit who should drop dead because I'm HELPING. Is it my fault that I care so much?
Spend ten minutes on Nextdoor.
In my small town and in my family, the people who have always been a little abusive, a little nasty, have spent the last two years taking a flamethrower to people who don't comply. WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING MASK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!?!?!?
Imagine how good that feels, if that's what you like to do to other people. It's pure pleasure – why would they want to stop?
Adding that I was in a bakery in Los Angeles when a woman walked in without a mask, maybe three months ago. She said that she had lost her mask, and did they have one that she could use? They responded by screaming abuse at her: "GET THE FUCK OUT, YOU BITCH!"
You can't do that to customers at work. Ahhh, but in a PANDEMIC....
It's a get-out-of-jail-free card for social abuse.
Love and tolerance.
Yes, my mother lives on a house on a hill, sitting above lots of other houses, in California. She literally sits on her porch with binoculars and calls the cops on anyone she sees outside without a mask during the mnadates. Because she cares of course. Just doing her part to heroically keep the community safe!
I bet the local police dispatchers just love her.
That sounds like something my wife would do, although I keep her busy enough - GET YOUR MASK ON as we get within 50 feet of the store entrance 😝
I serve as a moderator on NextDoor and, by and large, can confirm. People go on tirades against each other and certain people get targeted repeatedly, notwithstanding that the targets pop back up after each punch. Mostly the jibes are about (who would have guessed) perceived racism and Karen-ism.
Just for the record, which matters not at all in an anonymous setting such as this, I do not approach reports of posts from the vantage point of thinking that suppression is desirable. Reports may be based on real objections or they may be based on someone saying something that was disliked or disagreed with. Absent statements that are pure personal attacks or transparently bigoted, I tend to let posters play among themselves or suggest counseling a poster rather than voting for removal outright.
Ha ha that is me to a T, I'm helping because I care so much - you really made my day with that!
1) Yes, with some reservations. I think people who are all in Covidians (as I call them) basically want to be told what to think. That and they do not know how to admit they might have been wrong all along about any number of things, from lockdowns, to masks, to the vaccine. They just don't have any idea how to walk any of that back because, as has been noted, if you get somewhere without using reason it is impossible to reason your way out. And, 2) I think my initial response answers number 2, though, there is an underlying tension that relates to the unworthy and existed before Covid: those deplorables who voted for Trump and don't believe in science must be punished/banished/excoriated. There seems to be a subconscious desire by many (in North Berkeley, for example) to sadistically punish that imagined population.
Doubt my responses leave much room for debate but I thought, what the heck, someone might get something from my words. I never thought that any measures could be taken to stop the spread of the virus and that the right thing to do was to protect, or try to protect, the most vulnerable.
Branch Covidian membership and Trump Derangement Syndrome diagnosis seem to overlap…
no doubt about that.
what's that supposed to mean
Yeah these all seem like better answers than what I've been able to come up with. Totally agree on the contempt for the unworthy part, too (I grew up in N. Berkeley), as I've touched on here: https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/those-other-white-people
just shared that with my dad, who raised me in n. berkeley, but was himself raised in missouri and was the first in our family to go to college. he'll like it.
As someone who has a ton of family in North Berkeley (top of The Alameda, way past Solano) I would venture a guess that this is also tied into the environmental movement., and how that is not received as warmly as many would like it to be in other parts of the country.
That's literally exactly where the house I grew up in is located.
Environmentalists here in Nevada are actually filing lawsuits against attempts to build geothermal electrical generating plants. What the actual fuck?
if people in n. bekeley don't like strip malls and destitute neighborhoods i agree with them for the sake of the environmental movement. if they think they don't consume as much (i.e. finite resources) they have their heads way the hell up their arses. (i mean, i only fly to europe once every two years, but hey. from what i have heard one rt bt sfo and paris is the equivalent to the average amount of energy use of one average human being for one lifetime). i understand the distaste for the ways people treat the ecology and the natural environment--it sickens me--but really one can only change their behavior patterns. i am completely over the nimbyism and i actually just clown these fools virtue signaling all day and night. i have become quite jaded over the last 5-6 years. one question i have that relates to the environmental movement, for anyone on here, has to do with the amount of energy running the internet takes. i have never seen a good study on that. i bet it takes like...quite a bit. (i grew up up the arlington from the top of solano in a beautiful little house with a creek. how i miss running around that backyard).
Yes, I agree there's a bit of sunk costs fallacies going on here for some. The vaccines in particuar were sold like MMR vaccines. You take them, you don't get sick, and you stop the virus. Like measles. Instead these are really short term experimental gene therapies. They reduce your symptoms for a limited amount of time for one strain only. For people who look to the government to be a wise leader, the reality that they were lied to is too much. Better to double down and attack the messenger. Hence the push for vaccine mandates at a time when highly vaccinated populations are coming down with Covid in record numbers. Right when we see the limitations of the vaccines doubling down makes no sense, unless as you said, reason was never the guiding principle anyway.
Also, I have a few family members who are super self righteous and entitled and that are LOVING calling the cops on all of their maskless neighbors and basically acting like Covid gestapos and they do NOT want this party to end. Sad, but true.
Applying sunk cost fallacy to Branch Covidianism is brilliant.
Because, and I'm surprised I have to keep repeating this, the safety or efficacy of the vaccines is not Greenwald's or Taibbi's or Leighton's beat. These people cover political messaging and media, not science and medical policy.
1. Yes.
2. For many people, the pandemic is (was, heh heh) the biggest thing in their lives, for a variety of reasons:
a) Virologists and epidemiologists have never before been so important, have never before received phone calls and e-mail from the media. When the pandemic ends so will all this attention. So it is no surprise many of these people (scientists are people too, though this would apparently surprise the witless humanities graduates in the media) spent the last 18 months exaggerating the effects of the virus and thus their own importance; and it is no surprise they don't want this to end.
b) The media want clicks, and nothing besides wars and Trump gives them clicks like Covid. My news feed is all COVID all the time. What will they do for clicks when the pandemic peters out?
c) As I said above, this is the biggest thing ever to happen in many people's lives. Fretting over the pandemic, publicly masking up and tweeting about their vaccination jabs, it gave millions of people meaning for otherwise drab lives. Except that almost everyone had friends and loved ones in very serious mortal danger, I bet there were more than a few Americans who didn't want WWII to end, for the same reasons.
d) The Nazis demonstrated how powerful a social and political sentiment is to define and vilify the Other. With the unvaccinated, we have a modern Other that clearly too many people find pleasure in persecuting. The sort of person who enjoys the endorphin boost he gets from openly hating unvaccinated people will never want that to stop.
e) The COVID Industry obviously never wants this to end. I don't just mean Big Pharma (though they will be the biggest losers from a return to normalcy), but the cottage industry of COVID consulting and related commerce, plus the politically connected firms that have benefited most from the showering of taxpayer dollars onto the economy will also try to keep this going as long as possible. Matt Taibbi says he's writing a book about this. The Homeless Industry has the same incentives, that it would be destroyed if we ever actually, you know, solved homelessness (the $40K+ per homeless person San Francisco spends annually on "homelessness" certainly isn't being paid to the homeless themselves).
f) The control freaks and professional nannies at all levels of government have never had it so good.
Anyway, yes, according to what I've been seeing (outside the mass media) for the last month and a half, Omicron signals the end of the (medical, if not political) pandemic. This has been indicated for more than a month, and every week's numbers make it more likely.
I'm spending a week at a trade show in Vegas this month, if it doesn't get cancelled. I have every expectation of coming home with omicron. It's no big deal.
I think Holly the Math Nerd gets it right. She claimed in a recent piece that the split between Americans is best described as those that trust our government institutions and those that don't. I have a pretty even distribution of friends and family politicially and I see this in most issues. Concerning Covid, those on the left trust Fauci, the CDC, the NIH, etc and don't question them. They don't dig on their own like many of us do. CDC says wear a mask so they wear a mask. For me I wondered what the CDC was basing that advice on and found out it's a handful of observational studies and that they downplay the many RCT studies saying the opposite. I mention this to my friends on the left (typically the ones that trust our institutions) and they pretty much think I'm akin to an anti vaxxer (I'm boosted, BTW) - how could the CDC be wrong? Scott Atlas will tell you how, but of course he's a heretic!
So I think it's complete trust in our institutions and the associated "culture" that comes with those that do. Mush those together and you have a religion. Bottom line that's the only way this makes sense to me. It's simply a religion that dogmatically goes against everything the "other" side believes. Going back to my earlier comment, if the other side is starting to question masks, they reflexively double down. If the other side thinks Omicron could be the off ramp, they push back. And of course everytime they turn on CNN, MSNBC, or read the Post or Times, it's like going to church...
In addition to all of the other perceptive suggestions here, I think there's some amount of sunk-cost fallacy at work. I still remember how the initial phase of lockdowns and masks was predicated on the assumption that it might be possible to eliminate COVID entirely. Two years on, if it's endemic and has evolved to be a nuisance rather than a danger, well, then we didn't win did we? We didn't defeat COVID, COVID defeated us, and I think for a certain type of person admitting that the pandemic is drawing to an end would be tantamount to admitting that all the neuroticism and hand-wringing and worry was for nothing. We have to keep going until we "win," otherwise what was the point?
Ah, you mentioned suck cost fallacy before Jennifer did. I think that's a brilliant observation.
Never underestimate the human need to feel important. COVID has given a lot of people ways to feel important, powerful, and superior. They won't give that up easily.
I was just saying this to a very liberal wine mom friend. Most parents in our school district seem quite content to keep masking our kids in schools indefinitely. No off ramps. Just keep doing it to “keep the community safe.” My viewpoint is that kids have paid a very high price. And with vaccines and treatments, let’s let them live! It seems to me that many are almost addicted to covid and the fear. I see some people in the medical field writing on FB pages their thoughts- it’s like they are revered in a way they weren’t previously and they like it. I also think that some people truly believe they don’t have a date with the virus- even tho I believe everyone will meet it one day. But for those who believe they can avoid it, they want others to “do their part” to slow the spread. Someone said it’s like a leaky faucet right now... and at some point, we need to just turn on the water to fill the glass (ie, reach endemic phase) rather than prolonging the process with the drip drip. Another thought, I remember when I was searching for a home in 2010, as much as I was stressed out at the time, I knew even while I was in the home searching process, I’d miss it when it was over. It was like a hobby. Maybe some people see covid avoidance as a hobby- and they need to find a new hobby. It also seems like this is a book for would be mini authoritarian types. They get to tell us what to do and virtue signal their moral superiority. And finally, there seems to be a lot of money tied up in this... from the school test and stay program (places like CHOP in Philly have big money tied to offering that plan to local, wealthy schools) or the covid protocol money hospitals get or the clicks that big media gets from covid fear. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And sadly, the group I think might help move things along, is the PMC bosses- like my company that owns a ton of real estate and wants us back in the office - to get the company culture up and going. Same for how the CDC shortened the quarantine period. Bc industries needed them to.
My Mom friends that are extraordinarily cautious about covid are on both ends of the political spectrum (I’m in a very diverse upper middle class part of suburbia). It feels good to keep your family safe. I don’t see any particular pattern of cognitive bias or education—some have a background in science, some don’t. It’s not merely where they are getting their information from. I think it is more of an addiction coupled with personality traits in that in 2019 they were correct in being risk averse and cautious and the first to mask up and got a corresponding dopamine hit, and further increases in dopamine and probably oxytocin. I think it will take them longer to come out of this, but how much longer I don’t know.
Edit: I’m trying to reconcile the negative tone of the comments here to people with the risk averse mindset of my friends and how they’ve taken care of their families, which is logical and a society needs people like them. I live in a mostly red state in a 50/50 partisan community so my friends made decisions for themselves, not necessarily imposed mandates on everyone else. They are not holding onto power or indignation, just doing what feels good because it has worked to keep their families safe. I don’t think it’s more complicated.
That’s great that your friends are politically diverse and that they do what is right for them, without expectation for others to act a certain way. If everyone was that way, that would be wonderful. Sadly, in my community, at least regarding restrictions on kids in schools, that is not the case. I honestly don’t know if my school board will allow us to go mask optional. Ever. And I am going to have make family decisions accordingly- like do I send them to private school? Which would require me to move because I can’t afford my neighborhood and private school.
That’s awful. I hope you have a large, articulate, and engaged parental community willing to fight for a de-escalation plan, and school board members up for re-election in November.
I’m trying to rally the troops, so to speak. We just had our SB election in Nov 2021- and all 4 SB members were elected as pro mask. They all luckily support schools staying open, but they are fully bought into that mask “science.” I’ve engaged as recently as Monday night- attending my first meeting and speaking. And also reached out to my newly elected rep on my points via email. She seems reasonable, but I have to persuade her, with Grace, to do some research on masks and the downsides. I asked her when kids can stop paying for the decisions of adults who chose not to be vaccinated? She said she “heard” me- and that’s a step. I need more people who are sitting back and hoping things will turn around without the intervention of the community. There are many who support the masks and many who are vocal against them are not making us look reasonable. The meeting Monday was switched to virtual bc one person refused to wear a mask at the podium when he was speaking. Another person was taken out by the police bc she was not respecting the meeting “decorum.” I don’t agree that the police intervention was necessary, or that the meeting should have been shut down bc of the man who wouldn’t don a mask, but when we are dealing with 9 SB reps - all of the same political party/tribe- we have to meet them where they are in order to build a credible case for what we want.
From my experience in advocating for my own issues, I’d probably keep it evidence based—learning losses, inequity to ESL students, speech issues in elementary, etc. I’d look at the districts written, on site or in policy, commitment to whole child health and go from there. Imo this is probably covid becoming endemic so you can probably concentrate on an ask of the district to define and commit to an off ramp, say when the positivity rate reaches below 4%, which imo might happen before Spring Break. I don’t know of a way to take this conversation off the comments but if you want me to read over an email or speech I’m happy to. Good luck.
All great suggestions- I appreciate your input!
If you asked the Covid Dead Enders if they want the pandemic to end, all would say they want it more than anything.I think people want the pandemic to end, they just want it to end on their terms. One of the worst things about the pandemic was how it became politicized. The blue state version of the pandemic end is the vaccine's prevented all transmission and we eventually get to herd immunity and Zero Covid. This is basically what we were promised and it's not going to happen based upon the fact that Israel is about 6 months ahead of us and shows what is going to happen next. Even as it becomes clear that Zero Covid is not possible, blue state people refuse to admit that they were wrong. Admitting lockdowns/vaccine mandates/universal masking didn't make a significant material difference means that red states were right and it may cost votes. Thus people want to the pandemic to continue forever or at least until the facts change and it ends the way they envisioned it ending.
I don't think this is limited to blue state people though. I think everybody has issues admitting they are wrong. If the coin flipped the other way, red state people would dig just as deep and refuse to admit the measures worked.
People telling you that you are wrong is akin to people telling you that you are stupid.
And that is the problem.
Indeed, that has been the problem about a whole host of things, from Trump winning (an outsider running on the idea that your whole worldview is wrong) to Brexit (the bumpkins not agreeing that your ideas of globalization are teh awesomez). Oh, hell, this is what populism is about the world over; that the so called elites, aren't. That they are bumbling around, not helping, only making fat bank for themselves and their tribe, while bankrupting everyone else, morally and financially.
I think this has become a religion for many people. While we joke about "Branch Covidians", there is a strong element of truth behind it. With more and more people losing touch with organized religion, they need something to replace it and give their lives meaning. Instead of signaling that you are a true believer by wearing a cross, they don their masks instead. Everyone who doesn't believe the words uttered by St. Fauci and his apostles are branded as heretics. The political element is also very strong as many Democrats (wrongly) believe everyone who is opposed to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and forced mask wearing must be an evil, Tump-worshiping cretin. They fear being labeled as being labeled as a Republican, anti-vaxxer, or COVID-denier if they don't toe the party line. It's going to be very difficult for some to let go of this.
As I see some others have said similar, I would agree that this drive to maximize covid is mainly driven by Trump Derangement, which at its root is just tribalism. I believe folks do it in good faith, but rather than coming from the proclaimed engagement with reality, maximizing covid is driven by reactionary politics and is now a proxy, a litmus test, to determine whose tribe you belong to - them or us. For the tribe we are talking about (which is the one I was raised in and until recently belonged to), maximizing covid simply signifies you are not a deplorable.
I believe strongly that if Trump had pushed for mandates and lockdowns, then all of this would be reversed and my leftish peers would be the ones screaming about civil rights, etc. Tribalism is the reason there is no room for complexity. Folks who are tribal simply cannot fathom that there are folks who are not and so being against madates can only he seen as anti-vax, etc. Covid mensheviks must be destroyed.
Its tribal, reactionary politics.
And just to be clear, those minimizing covid are every bit as tribal and reactionary.
1. I do see the pandemic winding down also. The arrival of Omicron confirmed what we were hoping for in terms of vira evolution: more contagious and less deadly. 2. I am also not sure as to why some people seem unwilling to let go of the pandemic panic. I think many people in power do not want to let go, because fear makes people easy to manipulate — plus, elected officials love their emergency powers. As far a regular folks go, I think that maybe a few factors are a) the cultural glorification of victimhood; COVID positive diagnosis can grant you oppressed status in certain circles and b) the sustained brainwashing by the MSM with the 24-hour fear porn cycle. I think some people are just addicted to the fear as a maladaptive response to the psychological manipulation of the last 24 month.
Those things have occurred to me, too, and I would add two more: 1. the pandemic maybe adds some End of Days romance and adventure to people's lives, 2. obsessing over just preventing infection is a welcome distraction from having to think about the complicated, vexing problems of normal life. Like it simplifies things — life is easier when all you have to think about is avoiding germs.
But I'm just spitballing.
I have read some things about civilian life during WWII, especially during the Blitz and after Pearl Harbor on the west coast. There seems to have been a period of moral ambiguity, where one could do things that were normally socially frowned upon such as cheat on your husband, get high, etc. I think that might add a bit to the equation.
There is a class in America, the PMC, who has really benefited from this, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, most obviously financially, but also, I would be willing to bet, morally. Both in the self righteous sense of riding a high-horse, but also in the low sense, as witnessed by the the climate/covid modeler in England who was caught sneaking out of lockdown to sleep with his married girlfriend. Now, I am not trying to cast aspersions on others private lives, but I would venture a guess that there is a thrill of doing "naughty" things for a lot of people, and this was a great opportunity to act on these impulses. Think a preacher caught with a prostitute for an idea of this.
Interesting. And yet, reports have it that the birth rate post-March 2020 has dropped. Could it be that people have not been naughty enough? Or is access an issue?
For the unaware, what is this PMC of which many speak?
The PMC is (I am assuming, as I had to work it out in my head) the Professional Managerial Class.
And I doubt that people haven't been naughty, but they are using birth control and not using this period to start/enlarge a family.
I agree with your post with the addition that I've recently seen quite a few people being ashamed of finally, after doing everything right, getting covid anyway...like *those* people
Everyone please spare a thought and a prayer for AOC tonight.
People do not want to let go because they’ve attached a sense of righteousness to their cautious behavior. In most other situations whether something is righteous or not does not evolve with a changing situation so we are not built to easily give up stances we have adopted out of righteousness.
I'm writing from New Zealand, where the pandemic terror has really taken off, aided and abetted by a hysterical media and a Prime Minister desperate to prove how well she has dealt with this challenge (mainly because she appears to have an eye on a seat at the UN head table).
When it all kicked off here, many friends and family behaved as if they were in a cult, worshipping a new and terrifying idol. Obeisance and compliance with the idol's demands had to be publicly demonstrated. The Facebook posts, the lockdown sourdough, the teddies in the window, the social media portrayal of brave families struggling together in Jacinda's "team of 5 million".
Then came the mask and vacc rites. Again, public demonstrations on social media. Immense public pride taken in curtain twitching and dobbing in your not so obedient neighbours. Facebook banners proclaiming how you're vacced for the team. Wearing masks at all times, in the outdoors, alone in your car. Parading your opinions that the unvacced should be rounded up and forcibly injected and all your fellow cultists going woo, yeah! Shut those borders!
That it's all proven to be somewhat of a damp squib is causing a huge fracture in the thinking of the cultists. The idol is vanishing in a puff of smoke and they feel cheated and bereft of their god. The not unnatural consequence is that they are desperately clinging on to the last of their beliefs and, no, they do not want this to end
I have to ask, because this sounds so precisely like the U.S. (we live in a global monoculture now): In New Zealand do they worship Dr. Fauci, too? Or is his saintly status limited to his home country?
I am from Hong Kong but we have our own version of Dr Fauci. I suspect other countries do too
He does get quoted and is viewed as a respected authority here. As Raymond has said, we have our own version.
Ours is a pink haired lady who was photographed maskless, on a beach with a maskless friend during a strict lockdown. The story was picked up by a notorious right wing blogger here who's been involved previously in some fairly shady goings on. The mainstream NZ press published pink hair's excuses which were the usual don't do as I do, do as I say farrago. The article by the right wing blogger got buried under a tsunami of ad hominem attacks and everyone went back to curtain twitching on the neighbours.
We also have the obligatory batshit crazy computer modeller (70,000 deaths!) but, unlike the UK one, he hasn't yet been caught breaking a lockdown to roger his mate's mrs.