Totalitarian movements are simply "mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals." Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.
People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2000.
By now we should be familiar with the tragic condition of the quarantined elderly and the hidden agony of the isolated and lonely. We are less familiar with the counter-progressive consequence of segregating the otherwise healthy, maskless only under a shared roof of kin and friends. What happens when they venture out masked and encounter others behind theirs?
Trump encouraged a virulent populism. But after the crisis passes, will virtue-driven normalization of masking facilitate another version of tribal hostility? From the start of the pandemic to the present, the masked versus the unmasked triggered rancor.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. Masks, pods and bubbles are vital components for managing a pandemic. But donning the mask and disdain for those who refuse has become, apart from actual health concerns, a badge of the progressive and anti-Trump. I am both. There are problems lurking here. To the extent masks become a cultural norm, liberal cosmopolitan democracy can be undermined by life less informed by inclusiveness and diversity. When I wonder aloud about this, my well-traveled peers mention the extensive masking in Japan and the alien status of the gaijin.
The liberal and progressive ideal of tolerant cosmopolitan community requires understanding and getting along with those different from one’s friends and kin. The liberal ideal requires loosening the natural tribalism of ‘us and them’ and resisting the tendency of ‘us versus them’. Facilitating engagement with people different from ourselves allows this to happen. But when huddled together, without mask only within home and pod –– avoiding the other as contagion –– tribal pathologies of blood and soil, of purity and danger, too easily come out of hiding; are too easily projected onto the mask of the stranger. It doesn’t take a sociologist to point out that our households and pods are generally inhabited by people very similar to ourselves. Folks with our complexion.
Here’s a darker worry. For many of the financially secure and socially well connected, the lockdowns offered a cozy respite, marred by the annoyance of titrating a comfortable distance from those too much around. In contrast, the lockdowns have been awful for the isolated and lonely. We don’t hear much from them. Today, 35.7 million Americans live alone. How do you think they are doing? Although we might like to believe adversity brings out the best in us, mostly it makes us mean.
For many people who live alone, the loneliness manageable during ordinary times is now intolerable. When they leave their homes, masked faces make it worse. Harry Stack Sullivan’s observations from 1940’s and 50’s are relevant. In the seminal volume, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, he wrote, “There are good many situations in which lonely people literally lack any experience with things they encounter…. loneliness in itself is more terrible than anxiety.”
We rely on the acknowledgment of others, from the beloved to the stranger, to cure an otherwise empty heart. Without empathic responsiveness, we become aliens in a world without compassion. Some need a responsive face more frequently than others. But we all need it. When significantly absent, when hope is replaced by demoralization, our demons and pathologies erupt. The prolonged demoralization of knowing there is no one nearby who truly cares, no one who has your back or understands how you feel can foment depression, rage, and suicide. In such a world, the most terrible thoughts are not intimately expressed, soothed, or corrected.
Severe loneliness, Sullivan observed, deprived people of the companions needed to “integrate experience” creating defects in the ability to adequately appraise situations apart from wanting relief. It is unsurprising this breeds resentment toward whomever or whatever is held as cause. The masked face is a blank screen where resentment, fear, and anger are easily projected.
Public masking has gone on for a very long time. When the pandemic began my socially conscious neighbors and most everyone else in my neighborhood wore masks and zigzagged as we crossed paths. We feared contact and avoided lingering and gesturing. I was lonely walking the dogs. But then something happened. A few weeks in, late March early April, I noticed I was deliberately smiling with my eyes, nodding when my sunglasses covered them, and saw my neighbors do the same. We expressed solidarity as best we could. But by late October, with the fall and no end in sight, these gestures mostly faded except among those already committed to each other. The sidewalk, crowded or not, became empty.
I want to be clear. I have little sympathy for those who feel the mask is a violation of their self-entitlement, an insult provoking “don’t tread on me”, an expression of indifference to the concern of others. But ask, how do people eventually behave when they’ve been secluded, uncertain, anxious, and nursing whatever prejudice is consistent with what they blame for being locked out of life? And when the time comes, how do they vote?
February 6, 2022
Was it worth it?
A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the
Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality
By Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke
SAE./No.200/January 2022
A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON COVID-19 MORTALITY
Abstract
This systematic review and meta-analysis are designed to determine whether there is empirical evidence to support the belief that “lockdowns” reduce COVID-19 mortality. Lockdowns are defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI). NPIs are any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel. This study employed a systematic search and screening procedure in which 18,590 studies are identified that could potentially address the belief posed. After three levels of screening, 34 studies ultimately qualified. Of those 34 eligible studies, 24 qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. They were separated into three groups: lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place-order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies. An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.
While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.
JANUARY 26, 2022, From The Atlantic
The Case Against Masks at School