Overheard on the subway, a white elementary school student reporting on his day to his mother (I didn't get the context, but he was evidently repeating something he'd heard someone had said): "... coronavirus is a call from God that we don't deserve America."
That's the first theological account of COVID-19 I've heard (of), but not the first recherché one. One of my students confidently told our class yesterday that coronavirus was a fabrication, covering up the damage done to the human body by the particular frequency of 5G broadband (apparently a story circulating widely as we speak, originally propagated by an anti-5G site). Whatever understanding of causality we have, I parried, it'll be mobilized as people try to make sense of this still unfathomable threat, especially trying to make it someone's fault - whether it's bioweapons laboratories, the CIA, multinational corporations, presidential perfidy, pangolins, immigration, "karma," whatever; we should be vigilant about rumors, knowing that they proliferate in the times that try men's souls, and not let them distract us from measures which might slow the spread.
But really this was a reminder that for large sectors of our undeserved, underserved America, what may prove an existential threat is being denied as a hoax. (This student likely comes from an uninsured family who need to believe they can ride this out without medical care.) Of course those who've been told it's no worse than the common flu are as susceptible to catch it as anyone else, and indeed more likely to catch it if they don't take precautions. And so all of us are more likely to wind up infected - a communicable disease doesn't stay within one or other media/political bubble, the ultimate riposte to the fantasy of "alternative facts." Viruses must like nothing better than a society which doesn't have the capacity to understand public health. Terrifying.
Being caught between bubbles must bring its own painful difficulties. For instance everyone with family or friends in China has recently been hearing that the situation in the US is far graver than our authorities are letting on, and that the government response is dangerously inadequate: perhaps they'd be safer coming back to China for a while? There's much truth to this account of our federal government's response, alas, though it's clear also that the Chinese government is happy to distract its people from its own failures, and eager to argue that its draconion response was worth its enormous costs. Still, it leaves our university's Chinese students, for instance, in cognitive dissonant distress.
Consider the different recommendations of Chinese and US authorities regarding the wearing of respiratory masks. In China everyone has been required to do so, for their own as well as the public good. Here (and not just because we have insufficient supply) it is recommended only for those who are infected. If Chinese folks do what's right by their lights - for the common good, not just their own - here, they are treated like monsters. So to avoid racist reactions (also magnified for self-serving reasons by Chinese government media) they go without masks, feeling unnecessarily vulnerable as well as irresponsible as they do so. (It was partly with these students in mind that I decided to hold my classes online already this week.)
Even without rumors, even without defensive ignorant and self-serving distortions, there's so much we don't know. The more reason to cleave to what we do know - whatever comes will be better dealt with if we get it to come later rather than sooner. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Minimize group activities and try to keep "social distance" when you do go out. And be compassionate towards the people you interact with. Whatever bubble they're in, they're anxious too.
That's the first theological account of COVID-19 I've heard (of), but not the first recherché one. One of my students confidently told our class yesterday that coronavirus was a fabrication, covering up the damage done to the human body by the particular frequency of 5G broadband (apparently a story circulating widely as we speak, originally propagated by an anti-5G site). Whatever understanding of causality we have, I parried, it'll be mobilized as people try to make sense of this still unfathomable threat, especially trying to make it someone's fault - whether it's bioweapons laboratories, the CIA, multinational corporations, presidential perfidy, pangolins, immigration, "karma," whatever; we should be vigilant about rumors, knowing that they proliferate in the times that try men's souls, and not let them distract us from measures which might slow the spread.
But really this was a reminder that for large sectors of our undeserved, underserved America, what may prove an existential threat is being denied as a hoax. (This student likely comes from an uninsured family who need to believe they can ride this out without medical care.) Of course those who've been told it's no worse than the common flu are as susceptible to catch it as anyone else, and indeed more likely to catch it if they don't take precautions. And so all of us are more likely to wind up infected - a communicable disease doesn't stay within one or other media/political bubble, the ultimate riposte to the fantasy of "alternative facts." Viruses must like nothing better than a society which doesn't have the capacity to understand public health. Terrifying.
Being caught between bubbles must bring its own painful difficulties. For instance everyone with family or friends in China has recently been hearing that the situation in the US is far graver than our authorities are letting on, and that the government response is dangerously inadequate: perhaps they'd be safer coming back to China for a while? There's much truth to this account of our federal government's response, alas, though it's clear also that the Chinese government is happy to distract its people from its own failures, and eager to argue that its draconion response was worth its enormous costs. Still, it leaves our university's Chinese students, for instance, in cognitive dissonant distress.
Consider the different recommendations of Chinese and US authorities regarding the wearing of respiratory masks. In China everyone has been required to do so, for their own as well as the public good. Here (and not just because we have insufficient supply) it is recommended only for those who are infected. If Chinese folks do what's right by their lights - for the common good, not just their own - here, they are treated like monsters. So to avoid racist reactions (also magnified for self-serving reasons by Chinese government media) they go without masks, feeling unnecessarily vulnerable as well as irresponsible as they do so. (It was partly with these students in mind that I decided to hold my classes online already this week.)
Even without rumors, even without defensive ignorant and self-serving distortions, there's so much we don't know. The more reason to cleave to what we do know - whatever comes will be better dealt with if we get it to come later rather than sooner. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Minimize group activities and try to keep "social distance" when you do go out. And be compassionate towards the people you interact with. Whatever bubble they're in, they're anxious too.
