As I think back on the past 14 months since we first heard the word “COVID” and consider the great many changes that have occured in our lives, in the ways that we do business, and in how we relate to each other, I am struck by how our various responses to the pandemic provide an incredibly fruitful looking-glass into the depths of our individual psyches. Revealing, in some cases, aspects of our personalities that were previously subterranean. Both our individual and collective responses to the realities of the pandemic act like a kind of optic lens for the examination of what motivates us, our fears and hopes, and the varied layers to the underlying psychology that propels the restless engine of mass culture, of which we are all an active part. What do the masks we wear tell us about ourselves? What does our stance on vaccination reveal? What can we learn by analyzing the variation in our reactions and thoughts about the pandemic?
What do the masks we wear tell us about ourselves?
The evolving “new normal” of the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light a great many things. For one, it showed us aspects of life that we took for granted in our pre-pandemic sleepwalk. Normal activities such as seeing live music, going to the movies, attending performances, celebrations, and gatherings of all kinds, even a simple trip to a local cafe to work or read in and among the company and bustle of other people; all these simple pleasures became virtually nonexistent relics of a past I could scarcely believe was gone. The more I investigated my own thoughts and feelings, comparing them with those of other people in my community, striking differences emerged, even as early on as the first month of quarantine. These variations in our thoughts and feelings about the pandemic were emblematic of underlying differences in our psyches, in our job functions, in our wealth, resources, and job security, as well as differences in our relative degree of pre-pandemic life satisfaction, our baseline physical health, our locale, how securely we were connected in relationships, and more. Add to those distinctions, the striking and divisive differences that coalesced along the antagonistic lines of partisan politics. These divisions, in the wake of a caustic presidency, perhaps scarcely need to be mentioned as they have taken such a central focus in what has been by-and-large a public discourse that is perhaps best characterized by its recalcitrance, its oversimplification of complex issues to the point of dimwittedness, and an alarming zealotry on all sides of the political aisle. The pandemic brought to the foreground issues of trust, of how we obtain and synthesize information about this complex world that we inhabit. The result has been dramatically disparate interpretations of reality and of the global health and social crisis.
It’s a tall order perhaps—but if you choose to continue reading this essay, I have a request: try to create some space to move in your thoughts and feelings about your own experience of the pandemic. Maybe try to position yourself as an alien psychologist, studying humanity from afar. Without a “horse in the race,” as they say. To put an even finer point on this request: notice that you do indeed have a horse in the race, that your identity, and how you fit into society, is intimately wrapped up with your reaction to the pandemic and its impact on the social fabric around you. So let’s acknowledge this and try to become an alien researcher, looking at humanity in the way one might study a vast ant hill. Let’s wonder if things might look differently from such a point of view. Each one of us has a great many deep-rooted concerns about how and why we behave this way or that, and how and why we think other people ought to think or behave. Let us take notice of our desires and fears; let us peel back a few of these layers to see what might be there to be revealed.
The innumerable faces peeking out from behind each COVID mask each has a unique story to tell. There are stories of bravery and courage, stories of uncertainty, stories of dominance. There are the masks worn by doctors and healthcare workers on the front lines, caring for the sick and dying. There are the masks worn by families who lost a loved one. There is the mask worn with the spirit of the team player, standing in solidarity. There is also the mask that is worn in fear and the mask worn as a bulwark against an uncertain fate. The mask to imperfectly cover an instinctive fear of death. And looked at from another angle, this might also be the mask that celebrates the brilliance and value of life. There are masks of acquiescence and masks of incompetence. The mask of the germaphobe, and the mask of the loudmouth. There is the bitter mask of the resistant as they mouth a muffled, “Don’t tell me what to do.” There is the mask of subtle revenge for the wage slave against their petty master, the customer, who was no longer welcome in the building, offering something of a momentary reprieve, no matter how slight. There is the thankful mask of at least having something to do instead of impotently or mutely doing nothing. We have the mask that proclaims, “We did what we could.” The mask to cover that inescapable vulnerability we all feel when we are face to face with nature. There is the mask of the ever-convenient COVID cop-out, “I would have... but, you know, COVID.” There is the mask of the only child stuck at home, separated from their peers. There is the mask of in-grouping and the mask of exclusion. The mask of the hospital worker and the mask of the gas station clerk. The mask of the white collar professional, still happily collecting paychecks from their home office while lower classes struggle. There is the mask of the retail clerk, happy with the intermission of shame-free unemployment.
How desperately we wanted to slow down! And yet, how ridiculous that it is only our own greed, fear of missing out, and egos that kept us running like hamsters on the wheel! There are masks to hide fat necks and tired faces; masks to cover over blemishes and masks to add intrigue. We see masks of compliance and duty, and masks that speak, "Whatever it takes" to ensure that we get the job done so we can get on with it. There is the mask worn to ward off a repeat of the economic and social trauma of quarantine—the mask of not wanting to goback into lock down. And similarly, though somewhat diametrically opposed, we also see the mask worn for not wanting to go back to pre-pandemic life. The COVID mask may even at times have the element of a perverse fantasy, of an underlying will to ignorance that silently and forcefully propels our species through the ages. The mask is a symbol for many things, a desire to make others feel safe, a desire to be safe ourselves, a desire to signal our willingness to perform for the greater good, and a recognition of, and acquiescence to, the might of the collective upon which almost all of us depend. The masks we wear are as much symbolic showings of solidarity (and power) as they are a true prophylactic against disease.
That COVID represents a real threat there can be no mistake. That vaccines are generally safe and well-tolerated and that they have been a massive boon to the overall health of the global human population—this too seems like it ought to be incontrovertible in 2021.
That COVID represents a real threat there can be no mistake. That many people have died from COVID-related complications, some of them previously healthy individuals—this much seems clear. That vaccines are generally safe and well-tolerated and that they have been a massive boon to the overall health and explosive growth of the global human population—this too seems like it ought to be incontrovertible in 2021. Furthermore, that quarantining, wearing masks, social distancing, hand washing, and other measures against infection all demonstrably serve to reduce the spread and transmission of communicable germs—here again, there is nothing that appears controversial about such prophylactic countermeasures against the transmission of disease. The potential usefulness of such procedures in stopping the spread of a disease like COVID, and reducing its impact on the healthcare system are clear enough. However, it is interesting to take a step back and wonder aloud about why there has been such controversy surrounding the individual, governmental, and policy-level responses to both the real and perceived threat of the virus. The issues are complex, though they may at first glance appear simple. Depending on what you place value on, your moral and instinctive response might be directly opposed to that of your nearest neighbor. Why should this be the case?
One explanation might be found in that it takes only a cursory glance into the available data on COVID-19 to see that it’s risks are around 3-4 times that of the seasonal flu. I want to pause here and ask you to notice how you are feeling as I state this. Does this statement, that COVID risk is 3.5 times that of the flu, already arouse in you a defensive feeling? Does your chest tighten or blood pressure slowly rise? Are you readying a response? Are you perhaps bracing for yet another pandemic-related screed about how people should be reacting, this way or that? I am curious about my own defensiveness with regards to COVID and in general, especially in the realm of ideas. What does it mean when an idea elicits a visceral response? What can I notice about the emotional responses I have? What do these tell me about my perceptions of self and of safety? To return to the statement about COVID: Does the feeling you have change if I add three short words preceding that statement of fact, as in this article headline reporting on research from the Canadian Medical Association Journal in February of this year: “Not the Flu: COVID Death Risk Is 3.5 Times That of Influenza.” Initially, nakedly stating the fact that COVID risk is 3.5 times that of the flu, one might bristle in anticipation of what might follow being a tract against the severity of the international COVID response. Whereas, by simply adding those three words, “Not The Flu”, in front of the data, the study authors immediately clarify their philosophical position. It would appear this is done as a way of reassuring readers that, for them, 3.5 times the risk of the seasonal flu makes COVID a definitively different social malady requiring drastically different countermeasures, thereby freeing the reader to relax and rest assured that the article authors will be towing the line: that the way we have responded makes sense and was existentially necessary.
This essay isn’t about diving into data and parsing the many facts and figures of COVID, such as the rates of transmission, incidence of viral infection in this or that demographic, or the efficacy and cost-benefit analysis of various strategies for handling and mitigating risk via public policy. Those topics have been addressed ad nauseum, and one may readily find sources to back up just about any and all sentiment. Instead, let’s look at only this one figure to ground what is largely a psychological discussion in factual reality. The global scientific consensus is that the risk of death due to COVID-19, when we lump the whole of society together, notwithstanding all other factors like old age and pre-existing conditions and so forth, is approximately 3.5 times that of the seasonal flu. That single statistic provides a decent anchorage to factual reality for us to stand on as we ask questions about the nature of what we’ve all been experiencing for the past 14 months.
So, COVID poses roughly 3.5 times the risk of flu, this appears, for now, to be the objective fact of the matter. With that in mind, allow me to pose a subjective question to you: has your own response to the pandemic been roughly 3.5 times that of your own response to the risks of the seasonal flu in previous years? How about the response of the government, of your workplace, your church, and so forth? Obviously, these answers cannot be quantified precisely. They are subjective, but nonetheless worthy of some reflection. I trust that you can satisfactorily answer these questions for yourself, that is, whether or not your own behavior and the behavior of others appears to you to have been proportional to the actual risks. One may answer “Yes, my response to COVID has been exactly 3.5 times that of my response to the seasonal flu in previous years.” For me, personally, such a statement would strain credulity. From where I sit, the response to COVID would appear to be wildly outsized when compared to the 3.5 times risk multiplier of global scientific consensus.
The way we used to respond to the seasonal flu, was, for many of us, manifest as perhaps ‘very little response’ to ‘no response at all’. Did you regularly get flu shots? For many, the answer is no. I was one of the few in my social scene who did regularly get seasonal flu vaccinations. After having a particularly harrowing case of the flu in the mid 2010s that laid me out for several weeks, I began regularly seeking out preventative flu vaccinations each year, and I also got them for my family. Indeed, as a parent, for example, I am constantly striving to teach my children the habits of good hygiene: keeping hands off the face, sneezing into the elbow, encouraging handwashing anytime we come home, handle food, or use the bathroom and so on—and especially during cold and flu season. At home, we use disinfectants, antibacterial soaps, we keep a clean and orderly house, eat mostly healthy foods, stick to regular bed and wake times, engage in vigorous exercise almost 7 days per week, and all this in the time before COVID. Granted, we are perhaps above average in our family’s commitment to health and fitness, and that to some degree this is a function of our relative socioeconomic status. We understand fully that a healthy body helps one to have a healthy mind, and those two things sum up to a better life. We see that in these or similar ways, much of society was already taking sensible prophylactic measures against the transmission of germs. Before COVID, how did you react year-in and year-out to the very real threat of the seasonal flu and other pathogens, and further, how much priority did you place on health and fitness, arguably two of the most important actionable components in our power to be safer from risks posed by viral threats? Based on your personal experience of the flu previously, would you characterize your COVID response as 3.5 times that of our typical flu response? How about the response of the government and policy makers? If so, why? If not, why not?
One of the greatest single contributions to human thought was expressed in the 1700s by the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, when he said, “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance... A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” Farbeit from me to tell anyone whether their subjective assessment of the response to the COVID pandemic is accurate or not. It is our own responsibility to weigh the facts for ourselves and decide whether or not David Hume’s edict is one we choose to live by. It is up to us individually to choose whether or not we proportion our beliefs to the evidence.
One of the greatest single contributions to human thought was expressed in the 1700s by the Scottish philosopher David Hume when he said, “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance... A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
Without the full benefit of hindsight, at the outset of the pandemic, it is critical to recall that no one on earth knew what the scope of the threat presented by COVID would be. For all policy-makers knew, it was a virus that could have taken out a sizable chunk of the human population at severe and untold costs. From such a vantage point it is absolutely excusable to take swift and drastic action in attempt to protect the global community, even at the cost of liberty, mental health, or economic hardship. However, by as early in the pandemic as April of 2020, the evidence that COVID presented such an existential threat was arguably very thin. As time progressed, little was brought forth to support the severity of the reaction. Throughout the pandemic, a reasonable person might well have thought that some of the societal and interpersonal responses to the virus that were taken across the globe might be disproportionate with the actual risks. This is not to diminish the fact that there are and were actual risks, and that for some groups, the risks are disproportionately severe. These issues bring us face to face with important underlying philosophical and moral questions about the relationship of the individual to the collective, the collective to the individual, about risk tolerance, social cohesion and control, about the value of life, and about how we face death, and what limits we choose to place on the dominion of public policy over human beings.
Despite the rampant gaslighting, or, in other words, intentional psychological manipulation coming from both sides of the public discourse, a reasonable person might rightfully and appropriately question the efficacy, necessity, and safety of the available vaccines. At present, these three qualities are far from being firmly established by empirical evidence. Perhaps, we will know more next year or the year after that, once long term studies are available and more is known about COVID and its evolution. While there is some early evidence to suggest the vaccines are reasonably safe, there are still many things that are not yet known about both the virus and the long term effectiveness or necessity of the vaccines. Allowing for the possibility that a reasonable person might question these assumptions, the instinct to excoriate someone for having a viewpoint on vaccination different from your own seems unhelpful, to say the least.
It is crucial to note that neither of these points can be used to position someone on the political spectrum (or perhaps given the tenor of our present-day cultural conversation, the ‘political spectrum’ might be more aptly dubbed the political binary.) None of the aforementioned positions with regard to vaccination is sufficient to declare someone to be pro-Trump or anti-science, nor do they make someone into a so-called 'anti-vaxxer'. Personally, I have willingly gotten many vaccines, in addition to the seasonal flu shots that I already mentioned. For example, one year, I sought out 8 shots (or boosters) in a single week before I traveled to Uganda and Rwanda. So I am far from being anti-vaccine. Yet the fact remains that the vaccines for COVID were rushed to market in no small part to correct a political and economic quagmire that has been strangulating the globe, created by what has been an arguably disproportionate response to the actuality of the viral threat. Upon investigation we see there are other causative agents for the pandemic response. How about the great and festering desire in a large and growing portion of the population for something in the present society to evolve and give way? How about the public’s thirst and hunger for real change in the ways that we live?
While it’s true that the virus is perhaps three or four times as deadly as the flu, it is also true that it poses no great threat to the vast majority of people. So while the vaccines provide us all a path forward, by giving us a timely and fashionable excuse to change our behavior away from pandemic-era isolation (and idleness) toward something more familiar and free, the vaccine also allows each one of us (and our leaders) a very convenient mechanism for saving face as we simply decide that it is time to move forward with both our lives and the economy. With a simple shot (or two) we can simply begin to move on, keeping our vanity fully intact. Very convenient indeed! At this, I confess my thoughts are perhaps too challenging for sensitive ears. What vanity to think we can control every aspect of nature! What vanity to think we can control even ourselves! The evidence for such belief is scant. The impact of vanity on the human psyche is continually revealed to me. I am always underestimating both its power and presence. This has been one of the great lessons of the pandemic.
While it remains uncertain to what degree COVID vaccines provide necessary preventative protection against the virus moving forward, we can be absolutely certain that they provide a very real and perhaps necessary tonic for the psychological discomfort of admitting even the possibility that we were to some degree swept up in a global overreaction that has elements of both mass hysteria and moral panic. Despite the great majority that got caught up in the panic or the many other non-health related psychological rationales for slowing things down, the actual need for vaccination as a necessary prophylactic against COVID remains mixed. This holds true, no matter what the pundits or ideologically-bound experts may say. This points us back to a matter I mentioned previously: the issue of trust. How do we understand the world around us? Whose opinions do we consume and integrate? In this matter, and indeed in most matters, we typically rely on the determinations of people who have staked their reputations and careers on being right, and in that way they are the least capable of dispassionately and cooly assessing circumstances. We know enough of human psychology to understand that truth-seeking for its own sake, or truth-seeking in the face of difficult and uncomfortable realities, is not a widely shared disposition. This is doubly true, when the truth is difficult to confront or at odds with a majority view. Truth-seeking takes grit and commitment in the face of unpleasant and uncomfortable facts, it requires of us the ability to reveal our own inadequacies and mistakes, our own desires and our own limitations.
While it remains uncertain to what degree COVID vaccines provide necessary preventative protection against the virus… we can be absolutely certain that they provide a very real tonic for the psychological discomfort of admitting the possibility that we were swept up in a global overreaction with elements of mass hysteria and moral panic.
Unfortunately, much of the dialog questioning the proportionality of the reaction and response to COVID has come in the form of poorly conceived conspiracy theories and logically unsound diatribes. Allow me to settle the matter: we can dismiss out of hand all the conspiratorial chatter, but not for the reasons you might think. Correct or delusional, it simply does not matter whether any of the COVID conspiracy theories contain fact when upon investigation we see that the entire global response to the COVID pandemic is more than sufficiently explained by an understanding of what motivates humans, especially in groups. That is, the complexity of basic human psychology, influence, and cognitive bias. From this perspective, it is largely irrelevant whether conspiracy theories are true. People work together, sometimes behind closed doors, for ends that may only benefit a small group. This is obvious to the point that it should not need to be said. Of course, humans work together to further specific agendas. ‘Conspiracy’ in this sense is simply a description of how humans behave.
So why all the panic from the conspiracy theorists and why all the wild theories? As it turns out, most of us are not gifted amateur psychologists and only marginally scientifically inclined. Most of us are not adept at calmly and cooly assessing facts as data, like the alien psychologist looking down on this little planet. Instead, we are often moving through life already saddled and bemused with a lifetime's worth of false and incomplete understandings, with cultural baggage and misgivings, with distorted and fictitious perceptions of self. Add to these an instinctual over-reliance on the word of external trust-brokers in the form of news outlets, commentators, politicians, public figures, and so forth. We turn to such trust-brokers to help us form a passable understanding of the world and in the process we subjugate our own critical thinking to other humans, who perhaps have more time and education to devote to such things than we do. This reliance on the thinking of others has been essential to the immense success and growth of humanity in the industrial world. We outsource critical thought as a necessity. But we do so at great cost.
What explains all this conspiracy theorizing and consternation? Well, as it turns out there is another feature of the human mind that is simultaneously adaptive, and yet, destructive. This is that the overall process of human cognition itself seems to be a process of reduction (of stimuli), as opposed to one that adds resolution to our view of reality. One of the basic functions of the human brain is to allow us to reduce the complexity of the stimuli we intake through our senses. This reduction is adaptive in that it allows us to react quickly in response to dangers or opportunities present in our environment, thereby contributing to our survival. We are saddled with purpose built hardware for missing detail, for making the complex simplistic. Add to this, that our primary tool for comprehending and communicating about the world around us is also woefully inadequate. The tool I’m referring to is ‘language’. Indeed we see that the totality of our ability to represent reality symbolically is never quite adequate to fully articulate its complexity. When we synthesize these two factors, we may begin to understand that oversimplification is the rule for human understanding, not the exception.
To apply this to the COVID crisis, we see our desire for a simple story that explains away any apparent cognitive dissonance between the perceived reality of the viral threat (3.5 times the flu) and the disproportionately drastic response (global shut down). To those without an unusually sophisticated knowledge of human cognitive biases and the psychology of group dynamics, a half-cocked conspiracy theory might well go a long way towards explaining any apparent disconnect in proportionality between risk and remedy in the COVID crisis. For many, the obvious disconnect between COVID reality and COVID response required some explanation. It is in this gap that conspiracy theorists find their fertile soil.
Luckily, facts themselves are never political. Politics always lies with interpretation and implementation. The domain of the political is ever the domain of hierarchy, of certain groups or individuals holding power over others. We prefer to ignore this in polite discourse because it is uncomfortable for us to look at the inescapable reality of power dynamics for the social primate, so much so that we create great and labyrinthian narratives to protect the fragile constructs of our identities in the abstract realm of recital, be it political, religious, or ideological. For many, the experience of the pandemic has been akin to a kind mass delusion, a widespread campaign of gaslighting or psychological manipulation. It’s been enough to render even the most critical of thinkers among us confounded and unsure. For those of us who are willing to acknowledge the many ways in which the COVID response poses important and far from clear philosophical questions about what is owed by individuals to the dominion of the collective, we owe it to ourselves to hold fast against our own instinctive reduction of the many colors of reality into the dumbed down black and white of our mental hardware. We owe it to ourselves to allow room for our own suspicions of the many narratives weaved around the issues brought forth by the padmeinc. We owe it to ourselves to seek truth, even when by doing so we may begin to doubt our own resolve. No matter how difficult, complex, or inconvenient it may be, we owe it to ourselves to strive for something at least proximal to truth. In a pluralistic and free society it is neither our business, nor our place to inveigh upon others on the issues of whether or not to vaccinate and what to believe because it is far from certain that any politically-driven or reflexive position about our response to COVID is beyond reproach. Regardless of what you believe, it would behoove us all to drop the sanctimonious attitudes and invite more nuance into the discussion. The United States of America at its best is a bastion for acceptance, tolerance, and hope in a world that is all too often drowning in self-righteousness, factions, and fear. I write these words with compassion for all sides of the political spectrum. I understand that each means well, that each means to protect the community—and this is certainly a noble aspiration. For the most part, each of us believes wholeheartedly that our understanding of this issue is supported by facts, and that to have another point of view indicates some lack of intelligence or awareness. What I'm suggesting is that if we can step outside of the hardened stance of ideology, and entertain the notion that perhaps there is some kernel of truth to the viewpoints of others, then perhaps the past thirteen months can be explained through means that are neither strictly scientific, nor conspiratorial.
At bottom, perhaps the COVID mask is a fitting symbol for humanity in this young millenia. A screen to shade the many fictions of our individual identities from the glare and immense impenetrability of naked reality. The COVID mask may be a suitable emblem for our resistance in the face of our unavoidable and oncoming deaths. This is the primal fear at the center of all morality. The mask is an emblem of our resistance as small creatures, against the towering grandeur that is the process, wonder, and mystery of life. The mask is a symbolic genuflection at the altar of the unknown. The mask is a symbol of our deepest desire to control what is uncontrollable. We need look no further than the complexity of underlying human psychology, our instinctual fear in the face of death, and the unavoidable reduction of complexity that occurs in the human mind, in favor of that which is strong: the monolithic. It is this mechanic that underpins and drives the growth and radiation of all living things, up to and including the human being. If one were to step for a moment outside one’s own vanity and fear, should such a thing be possible, one might find oneself looking upon members in the community who share my suspicions regarding the motivations and proportionality of the mainstream COVID response with a bit more charity and generosity of spirit.
It is far from a foregone conclusion that each of us must go on living at any and all cost, or that from such a moral prescription arises the best of all possible global societies. We need to ask more difficult questions. Questions about what kind of world we hope to inhabit, about what kind of lives we choose to lead, and what social contract each of us individually chooses to endow with validity by lending to it our sovereign consent.
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