The Plague Changed. Most People Didn't.
At 7am, on Thursday, March 12, 2020, I knew we weren’t going to the Jason Aldean concert at the Alliant Energy Center.
Jane’s birthday was upon us, and we were to celebrate that evening with 20,000 of our closest friends.
The Plague had other ideas. I had been following the COVID-19 threat since the first reports from China. I took more serious note in January 2020, and by late February had shared a comedic meme on Facebook, but with a sense of mounting dread. I suspected, but could not know, what was about to hit us.
Now we all know.
That Thursday, March 12, 2020, we had our “last meal”. While everyone else in Madison evidently felt a need to crowd into Costco and Woodman’s for endless reams of toilet paper (and become, in the process, participants in likely spreader events), we consoled our loss of the concert with dinner at Rare Steakhouse downtown. The ribeye, by the way, is excellent and recommended. Our waitress was intelligent and evidently watched world news, as she wore gloves and maintained as much distance as possible…a heartfelt and ultimately fruitless effort given the impending disaster. At the next table, Jane and I heard a salesman of some type, on the phone with his secretary, discussing her quarterly bonus, and his impending trip to Seattle next week.
Jane looked up from her plate, and said, simply, “Nope.”.
That parsimony would come to characterize much of the next 13 months, but not for another 3 days or so. Friday at work was surreal. People were already starting to physically distance. A colleague and I visited the 24/7 staff in the data center on some now-forgotten errand, but I do believe the look in their eyes said, “Get out.”. My last, physical meeting was with the IT policy group, and involved some light-hearted gallows humor. That Saturday, we went to what would be our final social event for a while. Someone called to inform us their partner was ill and was being tested for COVID-19. I greeted their arrival 30 minutes later with trepidation; distracted as they were by their partner’s illness, they had not connected the possible dots.
If I doubted the existence of social pressure before, I didn’t now. There is no other explanation for not immediately leaving, except I didn’t want to start a fight. An invisible, social power exercised its will on me, as it would on others shortly.
But those events were 2 months off, and in the meanwhile, we isolated. Before the corner Ace Hardware became “Outside Pickup Only”, I ran inside and purchased M95 masks and rubber gloves. We had done our grocery shopping the weekend before, and so entered this period fully stocked. I went on Amazon, and ordered several different sets of KN95 Masks, guessing that some would make it and some might not (I was right).
We hunkered down.
Madison, Wisconsin came to resemble a ghost town, I imagine like many other particularly Liberal or Progressive communities. No one went outside. My personal Instagram account began during this time, and is replete with pictures of empty streets. Shopping involved putting on gloves and masks, and walking around others in exaggerated fashion so as to maximize distance. Employment-wise, we counted ourselves fortunate; Jane worked the phones in customer service and transitioned easily, while I, working in IT, with Teams as our existing chat mechanism for operations and communications, was already positioned to work remotely.
Others were not so lucky. The Madison Tip Jar appeared in Google Docs, and you could send PayPal or Venmo to friends in need. And indeed, many friends lost their jobs, and at least one became homeless and slept in his car. A cashier from Lazy Jane’s Cafe, who lived above Mickey’s Tavern, returned to her family in New England. All the restaurants shuttered.
Bizarrely, this was the start of my most rewarding and productive time at work. So-called “video chat” allowed for both privacy and access to everyone at a whim. “FYIs” could be left unanswered but one could note when it was read. In some way, communication increased, even if distilled to some monochrome form.
Personal space also became maximized, an aspect of our existence which would come to haunt us at the end of May. I do not think any of us guessed at the impact that social isolation would have on us. Social behavior is like a muscle; if you engage in it frequently, you become an adept, just as when you exercise a muscle it will strengthen. To not engage in social interactions is to be an isolate and lose social skills. When you don’t exercise, you weaken. All of us were getting weaker.
We were also getting more anxious. President Trump’s ad-hoc method of communication did not work well with a government trying to coordinate messaging during a pandemic. An understanding of the pandemic was muddled by contradictory statements. In such an environment, simple messages repeated often are the key to conveying information and gaining trust; changing messages create uncertainty and undermine trust.
To be unfair to everyone, a plague is by it’s very nature unpredictable and messaging needs to be updated often. But to be fair to ourselves, we were all learning, albeit slowly. The total isolation of the early weeks would soon be replaced with more frequent outside walks, and as we learned more about the airborne nature of COVID-19, concern for surface contact lessened, at least for some. Dr. Fauci was ubiquitous on television, Operation Warp Speed was proceeding, as were efforts with various drug companies for vaccine production, and the morning news shows and evening talk programs, after initial shocks, settled into a semblance of a new routine.
But social media had worked its magic in the last 10 years, and that mental isolation within networks of one’s own selection found a companion of questionable influence in the physical isolation we all experienced during the Plague. This was true for both those who believed COVID-19 was real and those who didn’t. Neither group was around much of the other to temper the extremes within each group. Truly, we were living out our political dissonance on another plane.
Like-seeking-like behavior became even more reinforced. Among those believing in the virus, there were some who became maniacally fastidious and isolating. Among those not believing in the virus or in the vaccines, there were some who became excessively gregarious and mocking. Both sides clung even more to the ideas of their political leaders. Behavior mirrored political culture and control, with disparate responses from states, and even between cities in states.
And then George Floyd happened. It became apparent in the weeks that followed that the 2 men had known each other. Was it racism, or was it simply machismo gone murderously awry? As is typical in such cases, no one was given time to consider details or nuance.
The Plague made all of this worse. Cooped up, and with rage pent up, the US exploded. The usual emotion accompanying such events was given further fuel by the lack of social practice the previous 2 months. Minneapolis and other cities, including Madison, protested, then rioted, then burned. Five days after George Floyd’s murder, one block from our home on Willy Street, a car drove through a protest march at the Social Justice Center and some bystanders were injured; a local driver had taken the wrong turn in their car, panicked, and helped set off a set of series of unfortunate events. Downtown Madison burned that night. Public health officials across the United States, moved by the moment, declared racism a public health threat and condoned protest crowds during the middle of a pulmonary plague.
Irrespective of whatever side of the COVID-19 debate you were on, your feelings on all matters were tempered in the crucible of mid-2020.
The rest of the summer was somewhat surreal. Madison, like most Liberal or Progressive communities, hewed closely to recommended protocols. Other more Conservative places, like Jane’s northern Wisconsin hometown of Minocqua, did not.
Traveling between Madison and Minocqua was like visiting 2 different planets. In Madison, masks and gloves were de rigueur and you were eyed suspiciously if you did not wear one; inside they were mandatory everywhere. In Minocqua, masks were not worn as much, and inside protocols were sporadically enforced. Some places did follow CDC recommendations; indeed, our trip to Camp Nawakwa on the Lac du Flambeau reservation was cut short, as the director had to cancel a week (our week!) due to an infection at the camp. But otherwise, life in the Northwoods was almost “normal”.
As Summer gave way to Fall, politics enveloped everything. In the end, President Trump lost an election he could have won if only he had been able to maintain a consistent message without appeal to his tribe’s desires; but he would not, or could not. In the process, not only did he alienate those who might have voted for him, but he actually enabled his own supporters to endanger their own lives. The irony here abounds; on the eve of the Trump Administration’s greatest triumph, facilitating the quick production of a vaccine, his most ardent supporters were among the least likely to take it.
I did not vote for Mr. Trump, but I must give credit where due. He got the vaccines made. However, he then undermined their distribution…which is, indeed, part of why I didn’t, or wouldn’t, vote for him. It is fascinating to consider the compartmentalization of the human mind within the context of the vaccines for COVID-19. One wonders if, in the alternate Universe where Donald Trump is still President, he was able to persuade his supporters to overcome the doubt he himself had sown. I think the evidence shows the answer to be yes.
The alignment of public positioning is so dictated by tribalism that one need only wait for one’s tribe’s control of the situation to change to witness a change in their position on vaccination. For example, does one trust one’s president regarding the vaccine? Candidate Harris said no ; in her Vice-Presidential debate, she was quoted as saying she would not take the vaccine on President Trump’s recommendation.1 The only thing that changed between then and when vaccines started distribution in December, 2020 was an election result that made her Vice-President; certainly any vaccine in discussion at either the CDC or White House would be the same one or same set of vaccines.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 changed.2 The original virus was both contagious and deadly; by the Omicron wave, the virus was even more contagious…but not nearly as fatal to those who contracted it. It is almost as if the virus, in response to vaccines, said, “Can’t we all get along?”. And indeed, that is exactly what happened. COVID-19 responded to changes in its environment and evolved. COVID-19 is our new flu.
People can change, too. For us, that was most ably demonstrated with vaccination. When at the end of February I was watching the news and saw a segment about some pharmacies experiencing dose losses due to having odd amounts left after a batch was opened up, I thought...huh. That following Tuesday I put our names in at our local Walgreens downtown where we got our prescriptions; I merely cold-called, asked if they had an extra-dose list for customers, and they said yes. Two days later we received our first doses of the Moderna vaccine. Then 4 weeks later, on April 1, 2021, we received our second vaccine doses, and fear for our lives ended.
I state things so dramatically, as it reflects how our behavior changed dramatically. We both went from being masked and engaging in the isolating behavior of social-distancing, avoiding inside gatherings at all costs, and creeping around others with a nagging sense of dread, to…not, and rather quickly at that. To be sure, we masked inside as mandated, but for us there was no longer The Fear. We switched from KN95 to cloth masks. We went to Easter services April 4. On May 13, the Crystal Corner Bar reopened for the first time in 14 months, and was packed within 30 minutes. On June 12, Jane and I married. Life was moving on.
Hope for a quick return to normal disappeared with succeeding variant waves, however. It became apparent that COVID-19 was here to stay, and as Omicron hit, cases spiked. But, as mentioned, the virus had changed. The death rate for the Omicron variant was far lower even while it was more contagious.
Habits form. Habits formed in crises are particularly durable, forged during stress. So it was that irrespective of COVID-19 mutating into a less deadly virus, and with vaccination rates up, people continued to mask, continued to socially distance, and continued to forgo in-person learning in public schools.
This begs the question: economic lockdown or remain open? Close schools or remain open? Before a vaccine was available it appeared that the logical choice was to close schools and lock down; after a vaccine, was that still logical?
It may very well be that irrespective of the existence of a vaccine, isolating behavior did little to protect our health. There will be many studies around responses to COVID-19; with our Federal system, we have a population of states, and therefore approaches, to compare and contrast. The results of one such study calls into question the very efficacy of lockdowns and school closures.3 Lockdowns were shown to not result in better health outcomes, and school closures showed questionable results. To quote the NBER study:
The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero, which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.
If that is the case, then based on all we’ve seen, it is evident that citizens on both sides of the COVID-19 Plague, and vaccine debate, can teach each other something; people should get vaccinated (Liberal Truth), but not go too overboard in trying to protect themselves (Conservative Truth).
It is now more than a year since we’ve been vaccinated, and more than 2 years since that fateful last dinner out in March, 2020. Mask requirements at work have been relaxed. Very few people in Madison mask outside. Mask use inside is spotty, but no one questions another’s choice to wear one. We come and go to restaurants and bars at our leisure, without worry. Within the last week, a judge struck down the Federal masking requirement governing modes of transportation. This morning I got on the bus for the first time in 2 years without a mask, smiled at the maskless driver, who smiled back, and took my seat.
I was the only passenger on the bus not wearing a mask. Change is hard.
Harris On Vaccine: 'If Donald Trump Tells Us To Take It, I’m Not Taking It.' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0
“Signals of Significantly Increased Vaccine Breakthrough, Decreased Hospitalization Rates, and Less Severe Disease in Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 Caused by the Omicron Variant of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Houston, Texas” - https://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(22)00044-X/fulltext
A FINAL REPORT CARD ON THE STATES’ RESPONSE TO COVID-19, Phil Kerpen, Stephen Moore, Casey B. Mulligan, Working Paper 29928, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, April 2022 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w29928