“Reasonable Thinking” In A Time Of Plague—An Analysis (25 January 2023) by Lawrence Davidson
Part 1— Covid-19
Since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, over 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19, while the overall number of U.S. cases stands at over 101 million. Worldwide, the numbers are 666 million cases overall and 6.7 million deaths. There is no doubt that ours is a time of plague and the citizens of the United States have paid a heavy price—the U.S. accounts for over 15% of world cases.
Here is another striking point. Particularly in the case of the U.S., the virus has not done this damage unaided. Much of the suffering and death was avoidable. Thus, by July 2020 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had confirmed and publicized the fact that “face coverings are a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19” and that they “could reduce the spread of the disease, particularly when used universally within communities.” By mid-December of 2020, the first vaccine shots were being given, initially to health care workers. Thus, “kicking off the most urgent mass immunization campaign since polio shots were rolled out in the 1950s.” However, almost simultaneously, it was apparent that a sizable subset of Americans were unwilling to take the necessary precautions. Because this was a highly infectious viral disease, those who resisted masking and vaccination essentially aided the spread of this plague.
Part II—Mask Resistance
In the first two years of the pandemic, the majority of Americans, about 80%, wore masks in public. However, 20% refused to do so. This was so dispute the fact that the public health rationale for mask use became clearer and more consistent as time went past. This suggests that refusal or hesitancy to comply was rarely due to sheer ignorance. So why was their did 20% refuse?
According to an August 2020 study undertaken by the Brookings Institute, “the number one reason given by Americans who are not wearing a mask is that it is their right as an American to not have to do so.” The study goes on to interpret this as “suggest[ing] the core principle of individualism in American culture is leading to significant health consequences across the country.” Individualism no doubt plays a big role, but, as we will see, ironically, it is expressed within a supportive community and group context.
Overall, the data breaks down this way: 7% of Americans who said they would not wear masks in public did so because “they did not want to be mistaken for a criminal” (in this category it is to be noted that the majority of male respondents were Black), 11% believed that Covid-19 was just a government “conspiracy, ”18% said they had no access to masks, 24% said that they refuse to wear a mask because it was “uncomfortable,” and 40% believed that it was their “right” not to have to comply. Putting together the last two numbers, Brookings concluded that 64% of the mask refusers believed it was “their right to not have to be inconvenienced by wearing a mask or scarf over their face is more important than reducing the probability of getting sick or infecting others.”
What we are witnessing is a suspicion of government generated rules, that is an expression of an historically entrenched small group and sectional way of life. This suspicion exists among pockets or subsets of the population particularly, though not exclusively, in the American south and midwest. These pockets often constitute relatively closed communities where people may well stay put over many generations and be wary of outsiders. Such conditions also produce a relatively closed information environment. That is, the range of interpretation of information will tend to be censored so as to be culturally compatible. What we have here is a dissident minority, a fervent and sometimes militant minority.
Some research finds the origins of this trend in the “frontier experience” characteristic of the country’s development in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is also belief that resentment among those still adhering to the racist cultural of 19th century American, has led some of the population to disavow “northern and urban” based leadership. This outlook feeds on suspicion of government in general and government by “liberals” and “experts” in particular.
To this we must add that the mask mandates, and vaccine distribution as well, came at a time when confusion and feelings of vulnerability were at all time high for the post-war era. It was not just the pandemic, but also global warming, gay rights, the reassertion of Black political power, a nationwide critique of the police, among other trends, all which bred anxiety among that subsection of the population that was white, insular and tending toward paranoia. Ironically, within a context of suspicion of government, the federal and state efforts to make the nation safe were interpreted as a greater threat than the pandemic itself.
For such people, mask mandates are seen as a foreign imposition—a demand that they abide by rules set up from afar by people very different from themselves and therefore threatening the local culture. Of course, when it comes to public health in a time of plague, the experts advising the government are not trying to destroy anything but a disease. Nonetheless, such intervention was too easily condemned as the product of lies and conspiracy. Nor was science seen as having an acceptable answer. The only acceptable reaction to outside intervention was defiance in defense of some variant of local community autonomy and/or personal freedom.
The situation soon turned loose the agitators and fanatics. An entire range of individuals from anarchist bullies with guns to enraged mothers (who know that they know what is best for their child in a classroom) have harassed and assaulted public officials such as school boards and teachers, airline personnel, retail clerks and others over the issue of masks. And, of course, this question of who has the right to do or not do what, does not stop with the issue of masks. It also includes the use of vaccines to fight a plague.
Part III — Vaccine Hesitancy
Just as wearing a mask was demonstrated as worthwhile in the face of an airborne infectious disease, so was the development and mass distribution of vaccines. The science behind the practice of vaccination is solid—having proved effective over and over again for centuries. Presently, vaccines can protect people from 28 diseases. However, as we will see, there is a caveat.
By November 2020, vaccines had been produced that could protect people from the original covid-19 virus with 94 to 95% efficacy. Researchers got this number by comparing volunteer test groups receiving either placebos or real vaccines. For example, Pfizer, one of the initial vaccine producing companies, recruited “43,661 volunteers and waited for 170 people to come down with symptoms of Covid-19 and then get a positive test [of infection]. Out of these 170, 162 had received a placebo shot, and just eight had received the real vaccine.” That was more than good enough to have the vaccine accepted as working and moved into production.
Efficacy establishes the promise and potential of a vaccine. Its effectiveness in a real world environment is usually somewhat different. “Vaccines don’t protect only the people who get them. Because they slow the spread of the virus, they can, over time, also drive down new infection rates and protect society as a whole.” However, this can only happen
if a relatively high percentage of the population has access to and is willing to receive the vaccine. And that is our caveat. Vaccine hesitancy has become its own epidemic in the United States.
In 2010, and thus before Covid-19, a meeting of public health experts took place over the issue of vaccine hesitancy—in fact, the official meeting title was: “A Crisis of Public Confidence in Vaccines.” That title reflected an apparent public disinterest or even aversion to flu vaccinations. The potential for an eventual influenza epidemic was just the tip of an iceberg. Other diseases, such as measles and polio, which had been successfully suppressed in the United States due to widespread, multigenerational vaccination, were making a comeback because parents were failing to inoculate their children.
The reported reasons behind vaccine hesitancy fall into three categories: (1) religious reasons associated mostly with fundamentalist Christian and Jewish sects, (2) personal beliefs or philosophical reasons such as “belief that natural immunity is better than is immunity acquired through vaccinations,” (3) safety concerns about vaccine side effects, which is “potentially the greatest reason for refusing vaccinations.”
Sincerely held religious beliefs opposing vaccination are very difficult to overcome. Some people have more faith in scriptures than fact-based science. Personal or “philosophical” reasons may be overcome by factual information from a trusted source, such as a physician, nurse, or pharmacist. “Education and taking time with patients have been shown to result in modest improvement in terms of affecting parents’ attitudes about immunization.” The concern for safety also ought to be overcome in the same way, yet has proven harder than expected.
The fear generated by safety concerns about vaccinations are most often based on misinformation that pervades relatively closed communities ranging from neighborhoods to ethnic enclaves. Often such groups first glean their misinformation from social media and then it spreads by word of mouth. “The anti-vaccination message on the internet is far more unbridled than in other media…. This hyperconnected digital landscape offers a new opportunity for people with shared beliefs to self-organize across geographic regions, influencing and sometimes disrupting public confidence and cooperation.” Into this environment often come faux-experts who people tragically decide to believe. This sort of scenario lays behind growing resistance to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because of a widely promoted, but erroneous link to autism.
One common complaint of those expressing vaccine hesitancy is that there is not enough available information about the benefits of vaccination. You can, of course, go to the websites of medical organizations and pick up a pamphlet at your doctor’s office, but this does not constitute enough information at hand. Perhaps what is called for are pro-vaccination web-based campaigns, science-based documentaries, making facts about vaccination a part of school science classes and the like. Essentially, one must flood the public with this information. It would appear that whatever it takes to win this fight and save countless lives in the process is not being done—at least not enough. How do we know? “As of October 2021, 12 states had banned COVID-19 vaccine mandates: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah.” This was made possible by a majority of the voters in these states voting for politicians who would pass such a ban into law.
Part IV —Reasonableness and the Group
The prevailing notion that our age is science-based is misleading. Science describes a methodology that seeks to understand the world based on repeatable experiments. It is practiced by specialists. It is certainly not the way the general population approaches their surroundings or nature generally. There is this related fact: ours is an age with a technological foundation. The irony is that, due at least in part to ignorance of science, the vast majority of people have no idea how their technology works—such as the connection between a disease, a science-based cure, and a simple technology involving a needle. It is a mystery that they live with but do not seek to understand. This ignorance can make people susceptible to fear-mongering about, in this case, medical science
In addition, if imposing protocols for surviving an infectious disease (based on science and technology) conflicts with local culture, the locals might reject the message due to the imposing forceful) method of its telling. They consider it their “right” to reject “outsider” facts and requirements even if doing so puts themselves and those around them in danger. In other words, their so-called individualism is based on conformity to their own community standards. This is something that, of course, most of us are susceptible to.
The conclusion one can draw from all this is that what passes for everyday reasonableness is not something independent of time and place. And while science has sought to make reasoned judgements independent of local culture, resistance to outsider pressures—at least among a hefty minority of people—seem to outweigh reasoned thought processes. This exists even when those measures are purely safety related, such as use of motorcycle helmets, seatbelts, and vaccinations.
Secular societies have developed educational approaches that seek to expose school students to a world beyond both time and place. It may be that what we witness today in the United States is a backlash to this effort and a simultaneous defense of local culture in all its many variants. The reaction to masking and vaccination in the face of plague is a similar backlash. Just like an accurate telling of U.S. history is seen by a growing number as a denial of prevailing “national truths,” so too imposing community-wide rules to deal with a disease is seen as a denial of personal freedoms, parental rights, and community practices by those who already feel under attack by “the powers that be.”
Most people will think and do as their group does. Enough people were influenced by their local group culture to act in a way that denied medical facts (up to 20% of adult Americans refused to wear a mask and 17% refused vaccination) and so have prolonged Covid-19. As a result millions got sick who might otherwise have been spared, and many of them died. And, all the while, the sizable minority responsible for this saw their behavior as reasonable and rational. Those who tried to suggest otherwise still are often harassed and even assaulted—a reaction that is not unique to the United States. Achieving reasonable thinking appears to be one of modernity’s interesting challenges.
