In the last week or two, it has become clear that we are not all “in this together.” Protests against stay at home orders are becoming too common around the country. Beaches are filled with people who are not staying six feet apart and who don’t even seem to think it’s important to do so. In senior communities where many restrictions are in place, residents still sneak out to get their hair done or visit friends. No amount of slick ads appealing to our sense of community persuade some of these individuals that what they do affects other members of the community in which they live.
America has always had a strong strain of individualism. The way in which our Founding Fathers structured our early government made sure there would be plenty of authority for States vs. a Federal government. Our very Constitution and its Amendments support individualism and the independence of the States. That independence has created State governments that reflect their residents and the different terrain of each State. However, the tension between State governments and the Federal government has recently caused negative outcomes. Instead of allocating resources to fight Covid-19 in an organized, centralized way, we have left purchasing decisions to the States, creating competitive purchasing, partisan allocation of equipment, higher prices, and even shortages of critical supplies to fight Covid-19.
The era of Covid-19 has challenged our fundamental sense of community as a nation in a stark new way. Are we really just individuals going our own way, or has this pandemic revealed the fault lines in that point of view? When an individual’s behavior has the potential to affect another’s with life threatening results, it confronts us with a serious challenge. How do we balance our individual liberty against our responsibility to the community in which we live? In the residential community in which I live, 70% of the residents agreed voluntarily to be tested for Covid-19. All of those tests came back negative. We don’t know the status of the remaining 30%, but there has only been one resident death and we don’t know exactly how that person contracted the disease. We have been staying in place for two months now and no non essential visitors have been allowed to enter our community. Still, the fact that most of us have tested negative could produce two divergent sets of behavior — we could view the isolation in which we have lived for months as a motivation to continue being careful or we could view our discipline as license to let up our guard and go out and expose ourselves to additional risk. What keeps us together as a community, controlling our individual behavior in service of the whole?
Science can play a part in keeping a community together. However, Americans are notoriously uneducated about science and actually resist facts generated by scientific research. Myths and conspiracy theories about Covid-19 have flourished in this science-denying environment. Anti-vaxxers are already sowing seeds of doubt about the development of a vaccine, so that when one is developed, it is likely there will be resistance from a portion of the population. The problem with that resistance is not just that they won’t get vaccinated. It means that the virus will continue to live and flourish, threatening all of us.
I don’t have any real solutions to the resistance that we see in the failure to wear masks or social distance. But I do know that despite these tensions, Covid-19 has produced thousands and thousands of acts of kindness and goodness around the country. Neighbors have become more neighborly. Go Fund Me accounts have helped hundreds of people in need. Health care providers have been appreciated and rewarded by a grateful public. Stories of extraordinary helping behavior have been inspiring to all of us. Americans generally come together in times of crisis. Most of us put aside our individual differences and fears in order to promote common goals. In these situations, our leaders generally model the behavior that will help the most people. Not so now. My concern is that the cries of “give me liberty” will delay and damage our ability to recover. The virus doesn’t care about anyone’s liberty. It only wants to attack and proliferate. I hope that we will be able to overcome these voices of division, but it will take every bit of our energy to make that happen.
One thing is for sure — if we never talk to anyone outside our circle of like-minded friends; if we stay inside our own bubbles of opinion, if we demonize those with whom we disagree, we won’t make any progress at all. I think we all need to look for opportunities to talk with people with whom we differ and conduct that conversation in a completely different way. Wearing a mask or social distancing are acts of patriotism and somehow we need to frame our conversation in those terms.