The COVID Dead-Enders

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Monday, March 29, 2021

 

There’s been a strange additive quality to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, health experts said not to wear masks. Then, they told you to wear masks whenever you were indoors and couldn’t socially distance. Then, most states issued guidance approved by their own health departments that required you to wear masks and socially distance at the same time. And suddenly, in deep-blue states, people began wearing masks even when they were completely alone outdoors. Then the authorities told you to wear two masks. At least until you could get the vaccine. And then, on second or third thought, maybe just start buying masks in bulk so that you’re supplied until 2022. So saith Fauci.

 

And now, in America, you may be getting the vaccine. Your elderly parents or grandparents very likely had access to get one already. If you have one of the many qualifying conditions, or your state is liberalizing the criteria quickly, you yourself may be getting the vaccines. You might be planning your first big family get-together again for this Easter because of it.

 

Or you may be one of the vaccine-hesitant and you intend to be a free-rider on the herd immunity that vaccination of over half the population and infection of many more will bring. You are looking forward to normality. To traveling again. Or to reunions, weddings, and yes, funerals that are unmasked and undistanced. To those life-moments when people cry tears of joy or sorrow into each other’s shoulders, rather than into N-95s, because that is the policy of the venue.

 

Unfortunately, for you, there is the COVID dead-ender, and he stands in your way.

 

The most common form are those who think some particular COVID-era convention must be a useful permanent obligation for the human race. Economist Bob Lawson wrote:

 

I have yet to see an argument for wearing masks (and distancing) now that doesn’t apply literally at all times. If you accept that masks have some effectiveness against spreading diseases, which seems reasonable, why should they not always be required? COVID-19 maybe 10x worse than say the flu and maybe 100x worse than other infectious diseases (even common colds can kill) but these diseases kill too. If masks are morally required now, why not before, and why not forever more?

 

It’s not that hard, actually. A mask might be required to help stop a particularly deadly pathogen. But it does have costs. First to socialization and development: Try putting a toddler through speech therapy when all institutions offering it require masks. People dislike the strangely clinical feel of masks in public spaces and the consequent reduced ability to read people socially. It also has costs to physical health. The transmission of less-serious colds and flus trains your immune system to fight off rhinoviruses, and even other coronaviruses.

 

There is also the chirping from many in the media and academia that they are “not ready for normal” life. Having chosen these fields already because they were predisposed toward introversion, they fear the exhaustion of the return of social obligations. Since May of last year they’ve been telling us, “I don’t like leaving the house anyway.” And with variants or even potential mutations out there, they think, maybe you — even you with the vaccine — you shouldn’t return to normal or leave the house, either.

 

And that is the real test, isn’t it? The final additive. Three weeks to bend the curve. Social distancing and masking. Just wait until the vaccine. Whoops! Never mind. Bloomberg writer Andreas Kluth put it simply at the top of his column: We must start planning for a permanent pandemic.

 

In Nature, Christie Aschwanden writes:

 

Scientists had thought that once people started being immunized en masse, herd immunity would permit society to return to normal. Most estimates had placed the threshold at 60–70% of the population gaining immunity, either through vaccinations or past exposure to the virus. But as the pandemic enters its second year, the thinking has begun to shift.

 

We’re in it forever. Kluth says that, while vaccines might be able to catch up with new COVID mutations, they won’t catch them all. Toward his conclusion, he writes: “The good news is that we keep getting better at responding. In each lockdown, for example, we damage the economy less than in the previous one.”

 

That’s the good news: We’re getting good at lockdowns! An adaptive skill of running and hiding. Even though the lockdowns have been a destroyer of small business, and a boon to big business. Even though COVID-19 lockdowns have brought about a baby bust across much of the world. Even though rates of depression are soaring, the good news is that lockdowns are getting less destructive.

 

Maybe because some of us aren’t locking down any longer. And as we see vaccination rates going up, and cases going down, we’re ready to live again.