In other news, I know that I've been tweeting a lot about my fears regarding shame and the COVID-19 pandemic. I don't want you to mistake this for me not taking the pandemic *seriously.* Quite the opposite.
I inveigh against shame because it's destructive in its own right, and because amidst a pandemic it intersects nastily with existing prejudices. Since antiquity, plagues have made people extra wary of travellers and "outsiders." Racism now amplifies this. nytimes.com/2020/06/18/wor…
Shaming people for perceived inattention to public health orders quickly turns into stigmatising those who get sick (they brought it on themselves, surely, and ew get away from me!)
But beyond even this, there's a larger problem at work here that epidemiologists have been frantically trying to tell you about.
Shame undermines our efforts to combat the pandemic. Fatally.
Shame undermines our efforts to combat the pandemic. Fatally.
Picture this. A person goes to an ill-advised house party with thirty guests. A week later, they feel sick. They get tested and find they have COVID-19. The next step would be contacting everyone at the party and letting them know.
Except they're scared of coming forward and facing shame, blame, and stigma. They hope and pray they got it somewhere else, that the other 29 people will just get lucky, and it'll all be fine. Maybe. Maybe not.
A contact tracer could do this anonymously, but people who attended the party would talk to each other and figure it out. So, our infected guest may just neglect to mention the party. Who wants to end up named and shamed on Twitter as a typhoid Mary?
"Easy, don't go to parties," you say. Fine, that's excellent advice. But that's not the world we live in. People will do foolish and selfish things. How do you curb the pandemic in *that* reality?
People have to feel like they have more to lose from *not* coming forward than they do from revealing themselves. If you make people scared to come forward, you hinder contact-tracing efforts which are the *best* tool we have right now.
I appreciate the difficulty. Collective action is vital. Social distancing and mask wearing don't work unless a majority of people are doing it. We need to model good behaviour and encourage it, while discouraging risky behaviours. Shame seems like the only option.
But I've become dubious about it because it seems to promote shame-avoidant practises rather than infection-avoidant practises. You'll do risky things but not talk to people about it, or try to be sneaky, *rather* than doing what you're supposed to do.
And that lack of openness makes things much, much harder for tracing and tracking the spread of the disease. Which makes it harder to fight.
Appealing to people with harm-reduction strategies seems to be the best way forward now. Perhaps the only way.
Appealing to people with harm-reduction strategies seems to be the best way forward now. Perhaps the only way.
The fact is that you don't always know why a given stranger in the street is acting the way they are. Obnoxious right wing trolls, who openly mock masking, for instance, don't help matters.
But you don't know who that person on the sidewalk without a mask is.
But you don't know who that person on the sidewalk without a mask is.
A better strategy would be to promote harm-reduction strategies to your loved ones, to make their risky behaviour safer, and help them feel safer coming forward if they *do* get sick, so medical workers and contact-tracers can do their jobs.
Here's one of the most important and accessible texts on the matter, from Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Julia Marcus: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Promoting healthier interactions, giving people options, and helping them feel safe and un-stigmatised if they come forward will go a long way towards fighting this ongoing crisis.
