Wandering Thoughts

Instead of having a defined beginning, middle, and end, the pandemic has taken on a different shape, one resembling the cyclical structure of pagan religions more than the linear unfolding of Christian eschatology.
Damon Linker "Philly's mask mandate is back, but it's got little to do with COVID"

I had to re-read that statement when I first came across it, because I found it bizarre. Not because the analogy was necessarily inapt, but it simply seemed out of place. It was an inauspicious start to the article. And while I understood the basic point, it never really improved from there. To be sure, I'm not really fan of public health theater or when organizations act because they perceive the need to be seen taking action. But sometimes, the criticism of same seems to be put forward simply so that one can be seen to be critical.

So, people in an affluent suburb get to decide for themselves whether to don a mask when entering a store or other interior space, but those in Philly will be forced by government fiat to do this because … redlining used to be practiced in the city? I honestly can't parse the statement or construct a coherent line of argument to justify it. (Your freedom was once restricted, so your freedom must be restricted now?)

The boneheaded comparison between redlining and mask mandates aside, I have to wonder if Mr. Linker has actually ever been to a low-income urban neighborhood. Lots of people in close quarters, generally low-level service jobs and multi-generational households seems like a recipe for an outbreak. And while his later point about widespread vaccination being something that would head off the need for ubiquitous masking, getting to a state in which "every person in Philadelphia were vaccinated" would likely require much more intrusive government action than a mask mandate. After all, the United States doesn't have large numbers of people who lack access to the vaccines. People are either hesitant, or face obstacles due to their jobs or the like. Getting shots into every arm is more work than it's sometimes made out to be.

For all that I found the article odd and its arguments off-kilter, reading it get me to think about the situation in a way that I haven't for a while. One of the things about partisanship in the United States and the Culture Wars that have become attached to that partisanship is that different groups of people tend to worry about different things, and the general pattern is to seek to impose restrictions on everyone, rather than make specific changes themselves. And the rationale behind this is some danger to the public.

In more liberal parts of the nation, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is considered the primary threat that people have to deal with, and so things like mask mandates and other restrictions are favored. In more conservative parts of the nation, non-traditional expressions of gender or discussions about the role of race in American history are considered threats, and so lawmakers are seeking to put broad public restrictions in place. And, of course, neither side sees the other side's fears as rational. Granted, as an observer, not all arguments are created equal. I'm somewhat impressed by the fact that someone can look at a worldwide pandemic and feel that precautions are overblown, and then turn around and tell people that their children reading a Toni Morrison book is some sort of intolerable harm. But I suppose that it doesn't have to make sense to me. My identity isn't caught up in any of this.

Thinking back on the comparison between responses to the pandemic and religion, I think it's more apt than I was inclined to give it credit for. Not that it makes any more sens to me than it did when I first read it, but because it's a reminder that much of what's going on is a matter of faith. Yes, in the case of the pandemic, there's a lot of medical knowledge in play, but the most recent wide-scale event of this nature was literally a century ago; there's a lot of extrapolation going on, and the resumption that we can take what's been learned from other events and apply it to this one. The somewhat random nature of a SARS-CoV-2 infection has already upended that somewhat. For most of the general public, belief is what they have to work with, regardless of the situation. And belief is hardly consistent. After all, people making the case that laws against public nudity constitute an imposition on personal freedom are considered crackpots. But requiring that one's face, along with one's genitals, remain covered is government overreach? To each their own, I guess.