COVID Numbness

So I’m embarrassed of my homestate yet again: COVID cases are way up in Texas after a premature and poorly advised reopening. They’re not alone: despite some states staying in shelter-and-place and keeping numbers low, the U.S. is facing a COVID explosion even more extreme than the days when the virus was just taking off. And it’s only getting worse.

Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder what’s wrong with these people. Not that I’ve been perfect about social distancing: I went on a few non-essential errands when businesses first opened up in Minnesota and don’t always move six feet out of the way when I pass someone on my run if they trail is too narrow. But how can you go to a bar when COVID has claimed nearly 130,000 live? How can anyone be so stupid?

There’s an Onion headline from a few years back: “42 Million Killed in Bloodiest Black Friday on Record.” A website called “Literally Unbelievable” archives Facebook posts that mistakenly share Onion headlines as legit, and this one has far and away the most incidents. Of course it’s ridiculous; how could more than ten percent of the U.S. population trample each other in a special sales event? But, glancing at that headline, doesn’t it make some sort of sense, at least for an instant? The reason why, I think, is that articles about Black Friday deaths start with a premise so bizarre and tragic that we can’t really engage with them, and most of the time we refuse to even try. We believe that it’s true, but hold that fact at arm’s distance to keep our mind at ease. With our willingly warped perception, the Onion can ratchet up the death toll to absurdly high levels and many people don’t even notice.

Aside from misleading media, I think that this phenomena is why reasonable people haven’t taken the pandemic seriously: the scale of tragedy is so enormous that no one can comprehend it, and from there it’s an easy step to apathy and denial. This isn't unique to people who refuse to wear masks; we all do limit our empathy, and most of the time it’s a good thing. After all, if we treated each death we heard about with more than cursory grief, we’d never have the strength to read a newspaper, much less a history book. Even those of us who take prevention seriously can’t pretend to feel the weight of each death as if it were new. If we did, then forget wearing a mask or staying six feet apart. We wouldn’t be able to leave our homes, if not from fear then from pain*.

With this all in mind, it becomes easier to understand people who disregard the pandemic. At this point, everyone is sick to death of being alone with limited activities, and if the danger is only an abstract and arbitrary number, then why not go to a bar?

I’ve seen a lot of well-intentioned people online (since that’s the only place I can see strangers communicate these days) try to convince COVID downplayers by citing the death toll over and over and over again. I’m not in the habit of getting into internet fights, so I’m really not one to say, but I’d recommend taking a different tact. Cite personal narratives of those who have lost loved ones to COVID instead. Sometimes this feels wrong; it’s certainly illogical. After all, a death is a death, whether you know the name or not, and focusing your attention on one story obscures the fact that there are too many stories to possibly tell. But the fact is that none of us are wholly logical, and to us, a death isn’t a death without a name. The way to force these statistics to shrink is to make them more than statistics.

__________________

* By the way, I'm not saying that people who haven't worn masks or social distanced have done nothing wrong. They made their own choices and are responsible for the consequences. I just want to point out that their decisions aren't too far removed from the way any of us think.