And the American press is eagerly catering to their paranoia.
“Barbenheimer” was the cultural event of the summer of 2023 only for those reckless enough to partake in cultural events, as vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the pandemic’s ubiquitous cable-news fixtures, reminded the hapless public.
“Not to be a Debbie Downer,” he warned his readers last week, “but anyone worried about a post-BarbieBoxOffice Covid bump? Or post-Oppie? We’ll probably never know since no one seems to be keeping track of such things anymore.” Covid Cassandras like Hotez may believe themselves vindicated today. American media is alive with coverage of a new “surge” of Covid infections, and it is a window into the psychological aversion to post-pandemic normalcy.
According to data gathered from wastewater-testing, Covid infections have been on the rise in recent weeks, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. “Test positivity has risen to 7.6 percent, a level last seen in November 2021, and that summer, just before the Delta variant swept the nation,” they warn. Stony Brook Children’s Hospital infectious-disease specialist Dr. Sharon Nachman told CBS that the uptick in Covid positivity has the medical community “worried.” Between that and the seasonal onset of flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases, she warned, “the winter may be a big problem.”
Of course, it’s not November 2021 anymore. Eight in ten Americans have reportedly received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and 70 percent of Americans have had more than one. And because newer variants of the disease are transmissible even to those who are vaccinated, the vast majority of Americans have by now encountered the virus in the wild and developed at least some immunity to it. And yet, a small but disproportionately loud contingent of Americans is not taking the latest uptick in Covid cases in stride, and the American press is eagerly catering to its paranoia.
Dr. Leana Wen, a one-time Covid maximalist who now advises Americans to maintain a general state of mild apprehension, recently tried to talk CNN’s audience off the ledge. Asked breathlessly if we might “see a return to masking for everyone,” Wen advised that “top-down” mandates should be reserved for “true emergencies.” She added, however, that those who are immunocompromised or otherwise at risk should mask with confidence that their precautions are sufficient to mitigate the threat of infection even if others in their vicinity refrain from masking. This advice hasn’t satisfied those who do not feel safe unless they can impose their preferred public-health conventions on their neighbors.
“Between July 13 and July 19, the state reported 745 confirmed new COVID cases as well as 340 probable cases,” read Boston.com’s report on the perilous state of public health in a region of the country with a population of 4.9 million. “With this continued spread, many businesses in the Greater Boston area made the decision to continue requiring masks in store.” With nothing better to do than register their dissatisfaction with the world outside their window, the site’s readers overwhelmingly approved of this decision.
“Preventing spread of illness shows that you care about others around you,” said one theatrically conscientious reader. “You might even save some lives.” Still others rejected the notion that there can ever be a post-pandemic moment. “Nothing has changed,” another reader asserted. “When we all wear masks, we are all protected.” These sentiments are not exclusive to those who spend all their time in sanitary isolation.
The fast-food chain In-N-Out found itself embroiled in controversy last month when public-health advocate Dr. Lucky Tran attempted to scandalize his readers over the existence of a company-wide edict prohibiting employees from masking (in states that do not explicitly prohibit such requirements) unless they could demonstrate an underlying condition. According to author and infectious-disease specialist Dr. Judy Stone, the firm’s corporate leadership had jeopardized both their employees and the majority of Americans. “In-N-Out might want to recognize that 60% of people in the U.S. have underlying conditions that put them at increased risk for severe Covid-19,” she wrote in July of the year 2023. Those deadly conditions include advanced age, being a member of a racial minority, being overweight, having ever smoked a cigarette, and having a “mood disorder.”
The Los Angeles Times’ assistant editor for “utility journalism” appears to agree with Dr. Stone’s prescription. In response to Covid-positivity rates in the city rising from 3 to 6.6 percent since April, the paper advised its readers to “consider masking when you’re around people” because “they’re more effective when everyone wears one.” That admonition is doubly true when attending crowded venues such as airports, movie theaters, concerts, conventions, or when taking public transportation.
A nascent protest movement is building around the need to popularize masking. Groups that call themselves “MaskBloc,” some of which have courted controversy in their efforts to reinforce masking as a universal social norm, are popping up like mushrooms. Other groups, including one with the menacingly Bolshevist name “People’s CDC,” are taking their fight against your right to breathe freely to America’s public-health institutions. Indeed, these are just some examples of the “anti-capitalist” solidarity movements that seek “to educate people about the ongoing pandemic as the government, corporations and complicit media declare it over.” According to their literature, masking is a workplace-safety issue, a workers’-rights and civil-rights issue, and an assault on the citadels of capital in America.
All this would be a mere curiosity — and a sad one at that — if these sentiments didn’t attract the sympathy of some of the most powerful people in America. If only out of an abundance of caution, it’s wise to pay attention to the signs that enforced masking, if not as a mandate then as a social convention backed by the force of stigma, is threatening a comeback. After all, we’re not out of the woods yet.