29 June 2020 (Chania, Crete) – Where I live, the sea and its inhabitants do not care that the world is old, or that the world’s other inhabitants are sad most of the time. I’ve always believed that our intensity is more or less malleable, that we change according to who we are with and sometimes what we are with or within reach of. The company of certain people will excite our generosity and sensitivity, our competitiveness, our envy. If we are pained by the values of the age or of the “elite” that control our destiny it can be a source of relief to come upon reminders of the diversity of life on the planet to hold in mind that alongside “the business of the people” they are also crashing waves, sea turtles and magnificent rock structures. I sometimes marvel on the scenes I encounter ever day, so ideally suited to human sense of beauty in proportion.
Lately the key debates with family and friends have been around critical issues like the proper graduated SPF (sun protection factor) schedule. And how much feta to put in the salad. So I have been a wee bit amused over a string of stories I have been reading over vicious and sometimes violent arguments between strangers because one of them wasn’t wearing a face mask.
NOTE: obviously I have not been totally out of the loop. I find myself in the enviable position … if that is the correct term … as COVID-19 rages all around me. In mid-March I pulled all of my media teams and video crew/production crews off business assignments and onto the pandemic, taking advantage of the feedback we had access to from multiple sources across Europe, the U.S. and Asia. That gave us a lot of time to read just about everything we could, call multiple sources, etc. so that … voilà … we were able to consolidate a lot of information into what we hoped would be concise and helpful blog posts for clients and the general public, looking at all aspects of the pandemic, many of which are free to access and you can scroll through on my archive.
As coronavirus cases jump in the U.S., a small piece of fabric has become a hot-button issue across politics, business, and health. And the conversation is only growing more heated. What are U.S. “leaders” [gag] saying? Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a national mask mandate is “long overdue.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized on Friday that Americans should wear masks in public. Joe Biden said he’d make them compulsory if elected.
Trump, however, has called masks a “double-edged sword” and doesn’t wear them in public. VP Mike Pence encouraged Americans to wear masks in affected areas, but said the White House will continue to “defer to governors” about setting policies.
But when you let states decide ….
… you get a fragmented approach. 21 states have some form of public mask requirement, per CNBC research. Which means 29 don’t so you get:
• Nebraska threatened to cut off counties from COVID-19 relief if they pass mask mandates.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said, “Government cannot require individuals to wear masks…local governments can require stores and business to require masks.”
Why the controversy?
Studies show mask mandates help reduce the spread of COVID-19 – even a simple cloth mask cuts transmission 10%. Another study revealed that countries with policies and norms more favorable to mask-wearing had lower coronavirus death rates.
But some Americans have called mask mandates an infringement on their individual liberties, which has led to chaotic scenes in grocery stores and airplanes as a result of customers who don’t comply.
• Plot twist: It’s not just the U.S. – European countries also have lower acceptance of masks, a study by Germany’s University of Bamberg shows.
The situation leaves businesses and their employees the stressful job of refereeing mask-wearing. Yesterday, one LA-area taco stand temporarily closed locations after employees faced verbal and physical harassment by angry customers who refused to don masks.
BOTTOM LINE: Mask squabbles show just how political America’s pandemic response has become, and companies are caught in the crosshairs, which Adam Taylor summed up quite nicely in a piece in The Washington Post.
And, so far, I don’t think anything I’ve seen perfectly captures why there’s no way the U.S. is going to be getting on top of the COVID-19 pandemic anytime soon than this photo:
I am still struggling with this stuff. I have much to learn. In my forthcoming book I try to address all the complex/interlocking dynamics around the pandemic that exposed the basic absurdity at the heart of our global society. Because containing the spread of the coronavirus is about more than practicing good hygiene. On trial is a whole global system of profiteering and “freedom” and the structural laws and incentives that enable it.
One thing is clear, however, and I wrote about it earlier this year. Italy has just gone through hell and people were shocked. How could this happen in one of the best health care systems in the world? The U.S. healthcare system is in shambles yet parts of it shine (as in Italy) for those who suffer from cancer, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome etc. – all of which are non-communicable diseases – the “big killers” of the last 50 years in the Western world.
But this is not true for highly infectious diseases, for which – as many Italian and U.S. doctors stated over the last few months – the approach must be community-centered, not patient-centered. And this may be the reason why China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan acted so swiftly and (after initial delay in China) successfully: because in their culture the community has always come before the individual.
Because in the UK, the U.S., Europe … the West in general … the individual comes first. So, to me, all this chatter about “the community” and “we must come together” is wasted breath. It is not in our DNA. A friend in the U.S. told me “we are a better country than this”. No, you were a country. No longer. Now you are merely a conglomeration of tribes. Where the individual is sacrosanct. You shall now reap the whirlwind you created.
