Hygiene Theater
"Covid Absolutism" -- the idea that, during public health emergencies, people should cease any and all behavior that creates additional risk -- was the title of a piece published in The New York Times.
John Miltimore writes at FEE:
Times writer David Leonhardt gives various examples of this "absolutism" on display in America today."People continue to scream at joggers, walkers and cyclists who are not wearing masks. The University of California, Berkeley, this week banned outdoor exercise, masked or not, saying, 'The risk is real,'" he writes. "The University of Massachusetts Amherst has banned outdoor walks. It encouraged students to get exercise by 'accessing food and participating in twice-weekly Covid testing.'"
Examples like these are virtually endless. They invite two key questions, Leonhardt notes: How effective are these behaviors in reducing the spread of the virus? And is there a downside?
As Leonhardt notes, many of these actions are essentially a kind of "hygiene theater," the subject of a recent article in the Atlantic written by Derek Thompson.
The phrase basically speaks for itself. According to Leonhardt, these actions are not rooted in science, and are primarily a form of theatrical presentation that will have little or no actual impact.
"Prohibiting outdoor activity is unlikely to reduce the spread of the virus, nor is urging people always to wear a mask outdoors," he writes. "Worldwide, scientists have not documented any instances of outdoor transmission unless people were in close conversation, Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told me."
It's why we didn't see mass hospitalizations after the BLM protests.
One might be tempted to argue that these theatrics still produce positive outcomes, since they are likely to make people more conscious of the pandemic and slow the spread of the virus.Taking extreme precautions is simply "playing it safe." What's the harm in that?
The answer is, "plenty." First, Leonhardt argues it's not part of human nature to live in a perpetual state of extreme caution.
"Taking every possible precaution is unrealistic," he writes. "Human beings are social creatures who crave connection and pleasure and who cannot minimize danger at all times."
Perhaps more importantly, he argues that extreme caution can backfire and produce outcomes that have the opposite of their desired effect. He uses the AIDS crisis as an example, pointing out that demonizing sexual intercourse and trying to frighten people away from it had the unintended consequence of increasing unsafe sex.
A similar phenomenon appears to be at work today.
"Telling Americans to wear masks when they're unnecessary undermines efforts to persuade more people to wear masks where they are vital," Leonhardt writes.
Likewise, keeping humans from socializing -- even outdoors -- is likely to backfire, either in causing individual harm (through depression, suicide, or "the hell with it" careless behavior). Finally, there's the death of businesses and all the financial ruin of their employees, suppliers, and others. I think we will come to see this as a major tragedy of this time.
Sometimes I think the Swiss Federal Council isn't doing enough, but in general I've been pretty happy and think they've been reasonable. I can't imagine not being able to take a walk.
NicoleK at February 15, 2021 10:44 PM
One thing though... I left the States in '10, and I've since noticed that Americans like to scream at each other a LOT. Like there's this moral absolutist ideal everyone holds and if anyone falls short they get cancelled, yelled at, abused, shunned, filmed and shamed and doxxed etc.
I don't remember it being like that while I was there, so either it has changed or I have, or both, I don't know.
But there's this troubling extremism, and it's really ugly.
I don't know if it is the internet or what, but whatever it is I hope it doesn't come here.
NicoleK at February 16, 2021 1:28 AM
you'll notice that comes primarily from a certain culture of people, who have a certain worldview and political orientation. You don't tend to encounter it elsewhere.
pogo at February 16, 2021 4:01 AM
How we came to call someone who wants to use government force to make you do what they want a "liberal" isn't really a mystery.
It is a symptom of an undiagnosed disease, which arrived with autism, Asperger's, etc.: Reasoning Deficit Disorder.
California was among the first to arrest people for being alone, in one publicized case using land and sea units to capture a lone sailboarder. He was sent to jail, and the close company of others likely to have COVID, for his own good.
Radwaste at February 16, 2021 4:48 AM
Y'know, Nic, if one didn't think the United States were essentially responsible for the defense of your new homeland as well as your first, your condescension might have real teeth… But here we are.
People walks around with smug presumptions about what science has and has not proven.
I think masks almost certainly diminish transmission as we move through many essential settings.
But they certainly convey awareness of a hazard which compels mutual respect. If you're the sort of dorkless renegade (and biological illiterate) who needs to stumble around with spittle flying from your lips so people know you're your own man, well, that's a good thing to know about you as well.
Crid at February 16, 2021 4:54 AM
"Hygiene Theater" is a pretty good name for it. But has anyone else noticed the almost religious aspect to people's reactions to the current crisis?
Here's why: Even if they're wearing it in situations where it couldn't possibly do any good, the mask is a sign of piety, a sacrifice to whatever angry deity has inflicted this scourge on us. And when other people fail to act with sufficient religious devotion, the pious get angry, and people need to be punished. Of course, for a lot of folks, punishing heretics is the fun part.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at February 16, 2021 5:01 AM
ORD, that's silly & smug.
Crid at February 16, 2021 5:50 AM
This, directly on point, is one of the finest tweets of a young year.
Crid at February 16, 2021 6:17 AM
'Wearing pants is just '𝒎𝒐𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓.' It's merely another way that powerful elites enforce subordination. Because we all know what's REALLY going on under there!
Crid at February 16, 2021 6:27 AM
This, directly on point, is one of the finest tweets of a young year.
And you're calling me silly and smug?
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at February 16, 2021 6:39 AM
Are you this many years old?
Crid at February 16, 2021 7:35 AM
"I don't know if it is the internet or what, but whatever it is I hope it doesn't come here."
Yeah in 2010 there were some of this, but it was less. Only saw it in cities or on line.
It has spread to other countries, France, England and Germany that I've heard of.
Some is intensified by the internet. Where you can have your group of same minded people, all agreeing then you run into one who disagrees, so it's attack. Amplified by anonymity, miss-communication (lack of non verbal signals "was that statement irony or serious") people being faceless/not real so no feeling any guilt in saying anything. (is the person you were just mean to, crying, suicidal, or laughing cause they riled you up enough to attack.
Then amplified by with Covid, much fewer in face conversations, much more on line conversations.
Joe J at February 16, 2021 8:46 AM
But there's this troubling extremism, and it's really ugly.
I don't know if it is the internet or what, but whatever it is I hope it doesn't come here.
Nicole, to some extent, I think that extremism, and overall uncivil behavior, has been accelerated and amplified by the internet but I think a much larger factor is that the internet -- together with the ubiquity of cell phones -- has dramatically increased visibility of this kind of behavior.
Back when we were growing up, before the internet and before everyone was always walking about with a camera permanently attached to one of their hands, every single occurrence of obnoxious or rude behavior didn't get documented and instantly spread around the world, generating outrage. Now it does.
JD at February 16, 2021 9:33 AM
So… There I was… sixty years old in the last quarter of 2019, working overnights for a majorly famous communications enterprise in a snug and joyless control room with two or four other guys in Los Angeles… And family responsibilities demanded weekly flights to the Midwest, which meant a lot time spent in Pacific Rim airports… Specifically LAX and Sea-Tac, each of which was clogged with passengers dodging construction work. One particular morning in SEA comes to mind clearly; we were jammed tightly against each other between panels of plywood like a psychopath's parody of a sex film.
So coming down with the flu in late December was no surprise. The guys in the control room could tell it was a deeply unpleasant one, so when I finally said I couldn't concentrate and wanted to go home one day, nobody got snotty. New Years Eve 2019 was as sick as I've ever been; frosty shivers under every blanket, with delusional dreams of fireworks blended into problem-solving scenarios of stacked SSH & Remote Desktop logins from work.
A couple guys at the control room came down with it later that week, too. I felt bad.
Months later, we figured out what was going on, and I felt REALLY bad. There were other vectors, but I'd not be at all surprised if some old woman in California died from Covid by picking it up later in my own chain. There's no better evidence for the existence of a Beneficent Christ than the knowledge that the fragile senior in my own life didn't get it from me in the week after my recovery.
GOLLY, I WISH I'D KNOWN THE TRUTH. "Theater"?
Seekers, it's a planet full of humbling mysteries.
Some of the mysteries can be solved by doing the reading, which you are not going to do… Either because really figuring this stuff out takes years and is uncomfortable, or because you —we— don't have the candlepower to comprehend the nuances of the biology. It's taken the genius of thousands of generations to get where we are, and it ain't us little people who move the insights forward.
But many of the mysteries aren't going to be answered at all, perhaps ever. Because life, not just human life, is complicated and capriciously random.
ORD, we don't know each other more that as names on a blog, but I can promise you that there's no one in your life who's more instinctively resistant to sanctity & pieties. The context is irrelevant— I believe very strongly in liberty and free expression of ideas, and press the point in every available setting.
But we have to have some humility towards the processes and human capacities which brought us to this beautiful day, only momentarily darkened by a typical cloud. It's a pandemic. We're about the same age, and if you've made even a casual reading of science columns over the last five decades, you know we've been warned about this.
The forces of commerce, politics and compromise which made our lives so sensational aren't comic book plot points, and there's no sinister cabal of mustache-swirling billionaires trying to warp your spirit by spooking you with woo-woo to wear a fucking mask, or to not breathe into the faces of strangers at the grocery store.
The incompetence and abject stupidity of our officeholders in both public & and private enterprise is reprehensible enough in its own right. There's nothing gained from bogus postures of savvy regarding the Illuminati.
Crid at February 16, 2021 9:43 AM
Back then, everything had to be described by someone - verbally or in writing. And, despite the best efforts of our better English teachers, only a few of us picked up any skill at narrative.
Today, we don't have to describe anything. We just take a picture or a short video clip and post that.
I'm currently reading Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile, his book about the Churchill family during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. The story features excerpts from diaries kept by various people during that period and the excerpts show a significantly greater ability to describe things in writing than is generally possessed today; an attention to detail that we no longer have.
Social media has not only truncated our language, but it has also ruined out ability to paint verbal or written pictures of events, places, and people with any descriptive brilliance.
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." ― Robert Wilensky
Conan the Grammarian at February 16, 2021 10:23 AM
I think the visibility amplifies it, though. People see other people doing it and then jump on board.
It'll come here. Probably in a decade, when the US has found common sense again because that's usually how these things work... we wait to do new things until they've already failed in other countries and they've revereted, and then we try them.
NicoleK at February 16, 2021 11:53 AM
Crid, I'm not sure smug is the word I'd used. Alienated. Freaked out.
Most of the people I grew up with have gone insane. People who were against violence will post about punching nazis, and then post how all Republicans are nazis. People who supposedly championed the working class have decided all cops are thugs.
Somehow people who used to be kind, chill people have turned into these vicious, vindictive people, eager to ruin careers of people who said the wrong thing.
They were not like this when I knew them. And now because of Covid there will be a two year gap, at least, between my visits and they will have changed even more.
Or maybe they were like that and I wonder, was I like that? Is it me who has changed or them?
But as far as I'm concerned they've gone nuts. And many of my circles, not just the weird artsy ones or former goths. Other social circles too.
NicoleK at February 16, 2021 12:13 PM
> They were not like this when I knew
> them. And now because of Covid there
> will be a two year gap, at least,
> between my visits and they will have
> changed even more.
Well, keep checking in, because we could use some Tocquevillian perspective on what's happening, so long as you're not catching fresh infections of your own over there.
See Conan, above. Television programming had already jacked up people's illusions of comprehension, and soon enough through idiot savants like Tucker O'Reilly on CNN. Social media drops that teenage understanding of culture to a more primitive, and more easily-manipulated, level of animal grunting. For such audiences, contradictions mean deceit, and irony is just the noise of the wind blowing.
Crid at February 16, 2021 1:35 PM
"But as far as I'm concerned they've gone nuts."
It's the heads, isn't it? You're looking at the heads. We're the first to admit when we've gone too far.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 16, 2021 1:42 PM
If we're gonna talk about hygiene theater, the Tony goes to the woman on my Facebook feed in Austin, TX, who just responded to some people looking for warm places to stay with, "Have you had a negative COVID test recently? If so, we can help!"
The city (including its COVID-testing apparatus) has been shut down since Thursday and the roads impassable for much of that. Ain't nobody here had a COVID test "recently" enough for it to matter.
I get not being able to help, but just scroll past. But, no she had to belt that out.
sofar at February 16, 2021 3:20 PM
"Or maybe they were like that and I wonder, was I like that? Is it me who has changed or them?"
Could be easy to test, if you like me are using the same e-mail for a decade, see what you were talking about X years ago.
My guess is it is them and mostly I blame mainstream news. My guess is you have more National Socialist (Nazi) statements per hour on the news now than you did while we were actually fighting WW2. With some channels all you hear is a continuous vomiting of, racist, sexist, opinion descriptors and no actual news/information.
With the recent canceling of Gina Carano I have several sci fi groups on FB. Each had article after article, shared, each claiming how horrible she was followed by hundreds of comments most in the negative. Occasionally someone would as the real question, what did she actually say/do? Never got a real answer, in generally they didn't know, all you might get is it was anti-semetic or evil or racist. all judgements and opinions not what was actually said/done. Had to go to a right leaning news to see what had actually been posted. and in my opinion it was nothing. Her posting a meme pointing out that it was a National Socialist tactic to get neighbors to turn on each other.
Joe J at February 16, 2021 4:37 PM
"Even if they're wearing it in situations where it couldn't possibly do any good, the mask is a sign of piety, a sacrifice to whatever angry deity has inflicted this scourge on us."
ORPMD, your sin is illusory: Crid has decided that this statement should apply everywhere when it does not.
But if you look in YouTube for Haulover Canal, you will see among the adventurers braving big waves a fellow on the bow of a speedy yacht, by himself... wearing his mask. Not a lifejacket.
The idea that he might get sick in two weeks is more important than that of drowning in two minutes.
Reasoning Deficit Disorder.
Radwaste at February 17, 2021 4:36 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc
Rex Little at February 17, 2021 5:08 AM
Raddy, watch your little teevee shows. Pout like a schoolgirl when the man with the sprayed hair in the chromakey tells you that you should be angry. Think about it a lot!, because the idiocies he offers can become your way of life. Drive to work getting all cranked up, take no satisfaction, and get pissed off some more on the way home. Write three incoherent sentences, eat a shitty dinner, and the cycle begins anew! But tomorrow you can wake up early to weep with shame over what happened to your favorite Game Show Host, and choke to imagine that as a child, you'd have had a chance to vote for the Lone Ranger, or that Gilligan guy, or Caspar the Friendly Fucking Ghost.
Crid at February 17, 2021 5:49 AM
NicoleK Says:
"Most of the people I grew up with have gone insane."
Please take a moment to really think about what you are saying.
While it is possible that some people you knew in your youth have become unhinged... it is highly unlikely that "most" of them have lost their minds.
You are likely viewing the US through the distorted filter of social media and hyper-partisan media... which is a lot like looking at yourself in a fun house mirror.
People are indeed pissed off about a great many things... but what I think it boils down to is a growing understanding that the system doesn't really function properly and needs an overhaul.
We'll have to see how things develop, but I expect things will improve in time and with some effort.
Do yourself a favor and reconnect with your friends via phone or facetime. You'll likely find they are far more grounded in reality than you currently believe.
Good luck.
Artemis at February 17, 2021 8:18 AM
Yes, maybe you are right. Hopefully this summer I can see people in person.
NicoleK at February 18, 2021 1:22 AM
"Most of the people I grew up with have gone insane. People who were against violence will post about punching nazis, and then post how all Republicans are nazis. People who supposedly championed the working class have decided all cops are thugs."
It's Reasoning Deficit Disorder. Possibly transmitted by an unidentified parasite, similar examples of which have been found in the wild, it causes the adoption of a mindset that is patently defeatist.
All sorts of examples can be found in California's vote-for-it-though-we-have-no-money election circuses.
Note Crid's last foaming. He of brilliant prose has been brought low, and it certainly wasn't my doing; that was a response to a simple observation that somebody thought they had to wear a mask AT SEA, IN THE WIND BY HIMSELF.
Radwaste at February 18, 2021 4:34 AM
Sixth grade's gonna be tough for you.
Crid at February 18, 2021 4:55 AM
Radwaste,
To be fair... Crid was never "brought low".
He was born at the bottom and instead of learning to climb he decided to dig instead.
As for wearing masks at sea... there is no purpose from the perspective of pandemic prevention, but it might be a decent way to prevent chapped lips.
Do we actually know why this guy was wearing the mask, or are we making assumptions here?
Artemis at February 18, 2021 5:54 AM
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