The civic disease of COVID is a tale of 2 information ecosystems that must be bridged
At a local feed store last week, two out of five customers were not wearing masks. When the cashier was asked if that made her nervous, she said, “Well sure, but we just got so tired of being yelled at we kind of gave up.”
A day later at the Lowe’s in Olympia, multiple customers and one employee were without masks, and the cashier wore his mask below his nose, making it ineffective.
All this happened on the same weekend that omicron exploded across the country, raising the fear level again, causing shortages of tests again, and causing many to curtail their holiday plans again.
Having tasted freedom last summer, it’s excruciating to see yet another wave of fear and alarm, especially since omicron’s impact is still unknown. Maybe it’s milder, but we’re not sure yet. Maybe breakthrough cases among the vaccinated will be slight, but even milder cases sometimes produce long-term COVID symptoms that can be miserable. We are exhausted by the uncertainty and dread.
And like that feed store cashier, we are worn down by the conflict between mask-wearing people who are vaccinated and the people who revile both vaccines and masks. This is a civic disease, a pulling apart of people who live in two entirely different information ecosystems.
People who only watch or read far-right media do not live in the same country as those of us who read mainstream media. They are convinced that we are being duped; we are convinced that they are being duped.
But if you spend an hour in their information ecosystem, you can see how they come by their beliefs. One so-called anti-vaxxer sent us a study by Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford University statistician, who, early in the pandemic, claimed deaths from COVID were vastly fewer than we think for anyone under age 65. Who could argue with a Stanford expert? Well, a lot of people. But how many of us check to see whether a study is peer reviewed?
Opposition to vaccine mandates has led Facebook to spread ever more toxic nonsense; last week it served up a link to an article that argues it is less immoral to fake a vaccination card than for the government to mandate vaccination.
It’s easy to despise people for being sucked into this alternate information ecosystem. But despising them just deepens our division. They believe they are rebels fighting for a basic human right: the right to make their own health care choices. And they don’t intentionally endanger others; they genuinely believe that COVID isn’t as dangerous as the mainstream media say it is. Theirs is a very individualistic approach. But rugged individualism is a longstanding hallmark of American culture, so that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Obviously, the 66-plus percent of Thurston County residents who are vaccinated disagree with the anti-vaxxers. But we don’t have to hate them, we don’t have to belittle them, and we don’t have to dig the trench of our disagreement any deeper. The shallower the trench, the easier it will be to bridge it when this time in history passes. We will need to do that to heal from this pandemic.
We strongly support the enforcement of mask mandates, vaccination mandates, and precautions that help us keep each other safe. We’re glad there’s a strong majority insisting on this point of view, which we are convinced is based on accurate information.
Our hope is that if we work a little harder to understand the views of anti-vaxxers, they will work a little harder to understand our fears, and put on a mask for the few minutes they are indoors with us in a store. Good manners and kindness are needed on both sides.