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Katherine Cross Profile picture
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8 Dec, 7 tweets, 2 min read
Also, as a coda to this thread: I'm not advocating for cynicism here. This isn't because people are "bad" or inherently selfish or whatever. Speaking sociologically, there's a much bigger picture here.
Most people, even people who are well-educated, are not going to be 'high-information' citizens when it comes to an invisible, fast moving crisis with an ever-evolving set of facts. Read the intro to this Atlantic piece about COVID messaging: Image
"If indoor dining couldn’t be made safe, he wondered, why were people being encouraged to do it?"

(Amanda Mull knocks it out of the park, as ever).

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Now, multiply these well-intentioned misunderstandings a thousandfold and you'll have some sense of how we got here. If it's open, people will go.

Most people have an understanding of COVID that is at least six months old.
I follow the news closely, the best science writers, the best epidemiologists with social media presences; I even skim medical journal articles. And I *still* can't keep up with "what we know about COVID." Now imagine the average citizen who can't stay home from work.
*You* may be surrounded by people on Twitter all saying the same thing about COVID-19. You may imagine "how could anyone not know what to do by now?"

But this is a pandemic. It's about 100% of the population, not the ~2% on this hellsite.
A lot of well-intentioned people, trying to do the right thing, blundered into COVID-19 infection and transmission because their governments herded them into a disaster.

Stop the Reagan-esque chatter about "personal responsibility." There are much larger forces at work here.

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Katherine Cross Profile picture
9 Dec
Another point that I neglected to emphasise in my thread last night: hard as it is for a lot of folks on here to process, most people who are flouting public health advice are generally doing so in good faith. And there's been no effective response to that.
What I mean by that is that they either don't realise they're flouting anything *at all*, that they have misjudged their personal risk, that they're working on incomplete, or out of date information, and/or that they have misplaced their trust in certain authority figures.
This is even before you get to all the cognitive biases that make us poor judges of risk against an invisible threat in the *first place.* (Just another reason in a very long list of why this can't be left to individual initiative).
Read 9 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
8 Dec
There's no question that our nation is despairing over COVID-19. It feels like people have given up, or are heedlessly killing each other with this virus. That, if only we were better, kinder people, we could unite *without the government* and conquer this dread disease.
It's a wonderful film plot, but it's just not how these things work. You, as an individual, can and *must* mask up, socially distance, avoid indoor gatherings, non-essential travel, etc. You cannot develop a test-and-trace regime, or a managed isolation scheme.
You cannot close shopping centres or bars. You cannot retrofit buildings to be less hospitable to airborne diseases. You cannot manage the supply chain of PPE or medicine, nor administer the creation and safety trials of new drugs.
Read 13 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
18 Nov
This is why I so insistently rail against individualist perspectives on the pandemic.

The problem with that mentality comes into sharp focus when you see cruel statements like this from a politician clearly trying to avoid responsibility.
The denialist maniacs get a lot of attention, but the real reason the US is mired in COVID is because politicians have lacked the will to do what needs to be done: pay people to stay home. The problem is *much* bigger than individual virtue.
The purpose of the "personal responsibility" rhetoric, whether it's coming from liberal or conservative politicians, is to ensure that governments can blame *you* for *their* failures on COVID-19.
Read 5 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
18 Nov
The election should remind us that the US has set a weird ticking time bomb by having political parties and partisan operatives so intimately involved in decisions they have a vested interest in--certifying elections, determining legislative district boundaries, etc.
It's extremely dangerous. It's not how it's done in other democracies (non-partisan commissions/agencies handle such things). It's a vehicle for legalised racism and disenfranchisement. And it's coming home to roost right now.
Even if GOP attempts to steal this election are half-hearted, incompetent, pantomime, doomed to failure, etc., it unnecessarily stresses our democracy to allow things to be set up in this way. It's extremely dangerous.
Read 4 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
8 Nov
Those who are naively calling for reconciliation--aside from neglecting the reality that Trump's sycophants are still, largely, not accepting the results--don't *want* to understand how different Trump was for POC, queer folks, trans people, the undocumented, etc.
The pall of fear was (and, frankly, remains) palpable. People started experiencing hate crimes and abuse where they never had before. Others came to fear detention and deportation. Still more are facing scapegoating and derision from on high.
I had relatives experience people at the grocery store telling them to "go back where you came from" because they were speaking Spanish. Trans friends of mine harassed, beaten. Loved ones arrested on false pretences. Jewish friends sincerely worried about their safety at shul.
Read 9 tweets
Katherine Cross Profile picture
4 Nov
Social media is hardwired to our ids, it would seem. I understand that many of us carry trauma and anxiety from 2016; nihilism and cratering pessimism feel safe because hope has betrayed us so many times over.

I get it; I feel it too.
But while a landslide may be out of reach, this election is far from over, and unfortunately the public mood has a lot to say about what's to come. Concede nothing until every single vote is counted, lest you do the enemy's work for them.
It's easy to forget that social media is public, and that our venting and catharsis has impacts that exceed our intentions and momentary needs.
Read 5 tweets

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