The Dishonor System

There was an excellent op-ed in today's newspaper on mask-wearing as the COVID pandemic starts to wind down.  I say it's excellent, of course, because it largely agrees with me, especially this bit:

I am astonished that the CDC and local and state health departments are explicitly depending on the honor system for unvaccinated people to continue mask wearing. When did personal responsibility become an effective public health strategy? Public health officials have never relied on people to act responsibly or prudently. That’s why we have public health regulations.

The people most eager to get rid of masks and to attack vaccination requirements are people without honor: people who produce fake vaccination cards, people who make fake legal arguments about discrimination, people who harass and even assault workers in businesses that require masks, people who tried to force the country to re-open even at the peak of cases last year, people who wanted to force others back to work without safety requirements in jobs that were heavily hit by the pandemic.  In my state, Indiana, they included Republican legislators who tried -- ultimately successfully -- to hobble public health measures, and who now want to cut short extra unemployment benefits in order to force (or so they hope) reluctant workers back to low-paid, unsafe jobs.  And, of course, there's considerable overlap between this stance and the claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

Many people, including me, drew analogies to other public health measures, such as the regulation and inspection of food establishments.  As it happens, a South Bend restaurant was recently closed by the board of health after longstanding multiple violations of the health code, culminating in two cases of food poisoning.  It emerged, however, that over the past couple of years the board of health had cut back on inspections and largely stopped public hearings on businesses with major violations.  The rationale was that they wanted not to subject the offenders to bad publicity that might hurt their business - which is, of course, the whole point of public hearings.  Despite all their fine talk of "choice," this policy had the effect of preventing the public from making informed choices.  It might have been defensible if the board quietly brought the offenders to compliance, but as this case showed, they quietly let the offenders continue to disregard the health of their customers.  It's not certain whether this case, emblazoned on the front page of the paper, will produce a return to transparency.  What is certain is that the push to eliminate public health protections isn't limited to infectious diseases.

As low as my opinion is of such people, I admit that I find their positions baffling.  We know that many of them remained steadfast in their denial of the seriousness of COVID-19 even when they got sick themselves -- even when they died of it, or when people close to them died.  But no matter.  Those who claim that they're entitled to disregard the health of others are wrong, both morally and legally.  They don't have the right to lie about their vaccination status.  They don't have the right to spread infection.

Myself, I still put on a mask when I enter businesses and other enclosed spaces, even though I've been vaccinated.  The more infectious, more virulent Delta variant of COVID-19 has been found in 37 states so far.  If we don't get another big wave of infections, wearing a mask won't hurt me and it won't hurt other people either.  As other people have observed, wearing a mask will probably also protect against the routine illnesses -- colds, flu -- that tend to spread in the fall and winter; it's why many people in East Asia have routinely worn masks for years.  The pandemic isn't over yet, but it's not all we have to worry about: the right-wing attacks on the public health system are partly meant to ensure unpreparedness for the next pandemic, but they aren't just about COVID,

The Voice of the Sheeple Is the Voice of God

To set the stage: I didn't really reckon with the difficulty of finding romantic partners when I moved to a small town last fall.  I had social networks of many years standing in Bloomington, and it will take a long time to build new ones here.  Those who are ignorant about gay life might be surprised to know that there are significant numbers of gay and bisexual men in and around a town of about 10,000 people; the difficult part is finding them.  So I've started exploring social media -- Grindr, if you must know, which I had never used until last month.  I haven't had much luck meeting partners yet, but it has been interesting, and I've been collecting material for a snarky/despairing post on my experience and observations so far.

The rising COVID-19 crisis threw a monkey wrench into my fine plans, however.  When I began hearing about self-isolation and social distancing, it occurred to me that sexual behavior was going to be affected, though I didn't see much about it at first.  But eventually I found information that confirmed my forebodings: an air- and contact-vectored virus could be spread by sexual contact.  Not directly through copulation as far as we know so far, but through saliva exchange and the shared breathing that intimate closeness - even just cuddling - involves.  Since I'm almost 70 years old, with diabetes and high blood pressure, I'm one of those vulnerable elders we've been hearing about.  I have better things to do than die, so I realized I was going to have to back off.

I'd been slowly negotiating to meet a local man since last week, when I still thought I could go on being sexually active.  I didn't hear from him for several days, and then last night he sent me a message moving the negotiations forward.  I explained that I was going to practice social distance for the foreseeable future.  I'm not sure what I expected, but his reply surprised me:

Um u really worried about that.  Man and people wonder why I don't have much faith in the human race as a whole. I would explain why u shouldn't give it and concern and give u reading recommendations if my word wasn't sufficient enough. But I've learned that people just follow the herd as long as there sot is comfortable and shields them from having to think for themselves.

But u do what u believe is best everyone should be vigilant and there's no such thing as too safe. Woot

I think the first sentence is supposed to be a question.  My initial reply was that people wonder why I don't have much faith in the human race as a whole, a backhanded putdown of him that I don't think registered; and that I remember similar dismissive talk from the 80s.  I wasn't interested in debating him via chat on Grindr, so I only added thanks to him for giving me an idea for a blog post.  It's my life and health, not his, and the word of a semi-literate person I know only through online chat is not "sufficient enough." 

Then, as I reflected, I realized that if I were going to follow the herd, I'd first have to decide which herd to follow.  We have the doctors and public health experts and the shortage of basic medical equipment and the near-total absence of tests for the virus in the US; but we also have the Trump administration denying that there is any problem, that COVID-19 is just like the flu, and we have crowds flocking to crowded bars and restaurants and Florida beaches for spring break, and elderly people going to their bingo games and book groups and Bob Evans, and various prominent dimwits declaring that they're going to stand up to the virus and not let it win, to eat wherever they like because this is America.  We have test kits mysteriously becoming available for entire sports teams and various celebrities, but not for frontline healthcare workers.  So which position is bold independent thought and which is just following the herd?  

Later today, after I began this post, the latter positions were undercut as Trump suddenly turned on a dime and began to treat the situation seriously.  I haven't asked my online buddy what he thinks about that.  After all, he himself seems to have flipflopped between the first and second paragraphs of his lecture to me -- unless that second paragraph is sarcastic, which seems likely to me.  I can't claim to think totally for myself; I'm not credulous about experts, and even the experts are struggling to make sense of the scattered data available to them.  As a non-expert I'm not in a position to come up with my own data.  But I had largely reached my own decision to close in over the weekend, before the official response had reached critical mass.  Not just for my own sake, but for solidarity with others, supporting my local businesses and public institutions.  I don't like it, but I also know how lucky I am: I'm retired with adequate pension income and health coverage, I have no responsibilities to pull me out of my home into riskier environments, and my town so far seems to be untouched by the coronavirus.  But no one knows for sure, because we don't have enough tests.

And that guy?  It's academic, because I can't foresee when I can go back into circulation, but after further chatting with him on other topics, I don't think I want to be in the same room with him.

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Image credit: via Daniel Larison - I don't know where he found it.