The most striking thing about the entire pandemic, to me, is the raw, spontaneous, primal anger some people felt at being asked to make personal sacrifices in the name of the public good -- a kind of gut-level anti-solidarity.
Most arguments about masks & other restrictions had that vibe to me -- people groping to reverse-engineer epidemiological arguments to justify what was, in essence, a pre-verbal feeling: "how DARE you ask me to sacrifice for the collective. I will NOT & you can't make me."
This is the only way to make sense of the endless string of often self-contradictory arguments about alternative treatments, "herd immunity," transmissibility, private vs. gov't mandates, etc. etc.
To be clear, those who felt the opposite -- a pre-verbal feeling of solidarity -- ALSO often reverse-engineered arguments & ALSO often contradicted themselves or strayed from "the science." Nobody's being purely logical or empirical about any of this.
I'm just interested in that raw, spontaneous response, so wildly different between groups, and how people who feel the one way can conceivably communicate with -- much less live in a society with -- people who feel the other way. Evidence & persuasion seem so futile.
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