Thread by @Helenreflects

Some loose thoughts on masking (my second day in Seoul). I had no idea the norm against masking in the US is so *strong*. Basically, if you mask at all you'd better be immunocompromised or have someone in your household who is, otherwise you are weird/not living your life/etc 1/

It is very strange, reflecting on this. I am continuing to mask, but only one of my colleagues is. I feel I keep on apologizing for masking (including to my students etc) and I am wondering: why am I apologizing? The answer is: social norms. Social norms strongly influence us 2/

Social norms explain, for instance, why so many of us are fine eating animal products although the agro meat, milk and egg industry is horrible and atrocious and produces a lot of suffering. Because it is socially acceptable (and in fact being vegan or veg isn't) 3/

We would love to think that in our everyday moral deliberations we weigh and make decisions based on our own moral insights, but unfortunately, a lot of our day-to-day moral decisions are influenced and guided by social norms. They make things acceptable or not 4/

We look in our social milieu what's acceptable and how we should behave. Hence, a lot of the "masking is altruistic/caring" is moot unfortunately because the overall social norm in the US is: unless you have a serious health condition, do not mask 5/

This is strange because there was, a while ago, a polarized split between conservatives (anti-mask) and liberals (pro-mask). The anti-maskers had truck convoys and protests etc. but then something weird happened: all of a sudden, the liberals were on board w the anti-maskers! 6/

It wasn't the introduction of the vaccine that affected this change. You will remember omicron which caused a huge wave of death and disability in 2022. Vaxx was already available. During omicron wave, liberals were still pro-mask 7/

Short intermezzo to say: Masks do work. Whether mask *mandates* work in the US is apparently continued up for debate, but if you wear an N95 or N94 consistently then you do lower your risk of getting covid 8/

Short intermezzo part 2: Getting covid is no joke. It affects all parts of your body including your brain, your blood (clots), your immune system. Receipts here: docs.google.com/document/d/1Xb…
So I am assuming that it is rational even for pure self-interest to wear a good mask 9/

Okay, so masks work. Covid is a *bad* disease. It's a public health disaster. This is why Koreans, even after the mandates have dropped (now only in healthcare to my knowledge) continue to mask, both in and outdoors. 10/

I asked local people and they say the mask-wearing outdoors has increased since 2020. There was mask-wearing before 2020 due to the bad air in Seoul. But it has now increased, and there is little reason to assume it will suddenly drop even without mandates 12/

The way people mask here in Seoul would describe as consistent but imperfect. In the sense that you cannot mask when you eat so they go off then, and there are other occasions too. But in general people mask a lot indoors and even outdoors. They do it when asked "for health" 13/

Compare this to the US. If you think of masking outside you are just *ridiculous* and apparently invite negative commentary. There is a lot of supposition about "last holdouts", "living in fear", "not living your best life" etc if you wear a mask 14/

Whereas, in Seoul it is totally normal to even wear a mask outside (I'd say about 50% does), and certainly inside and nobody's going to accost you about how you're not living your best life or living in fear. So the social norm is very mask-normalized/friendly 15/

I'd say Koreans are not "living in fear", neither are they "not living their best life" etc. This is in part bc their masking is imperfect (though consistent), e.g., they go to restaurants, they go clubbing, karaoke singing etc. Still they reduce risk in many situations 16/

I think paradoxically a mask-friendly culture bc it lowers transmission makes it easier for you to make individualized decisions about risk to exposing yourself to the virus. Do you want to go clubbing in Seoul's nightclubs? You could (and mask next day in classroom) 17/

Whereas, in the US, the anti-mask social norm makes any decision to socialize etc so weighty. You'll be the weird one again or you cave to social pressure and take off the mask. I am talking about things like attending a public lecture, where masking doesn't make a difference 18/

Now, what I am puzzling over is why did liberals decide to become anti-mask? Why did we en masse adopt the position of the freedom convoy truckers in Canada and other anti-maskers? It's not the vaxx (cf omicron) it came later... 19/

I think the best explanation for why the US became anti-mask is that it was politically expedient to do so. It allowed Biden, for instance, to claim a win against the pandemic (hence the talk of being in a "better place" it being "over" as ppl continue to die and be disabled 20/

Masks are, unfortunately, a very visible sign of the pandemic not being over. So it helps to have a strong norm against wearing masks. You'll note how suddenly the group of people who need to protect themselves became very small from initially a large group 21/

First, it was old people. Now it's totally fine for an 80-year-old to get his 3rd infection. Then, it was unvaccinated people. Now, only severely immunocompromised people need to watch out. If you can believe the social norm, it's fine for everyone else to get it 22/

But (see receipts in the thread) it's not. There are still hundreds of people dying of covid every day in the US. There are still many more dying of stroke, heart attacks etc. They all went out maskless and didn't update their boosters bc the social norm says "it's fine" 23/

Indeed, the social norm in the US says something like this: Covid is never going to go away. If you continue to stay cautious in an attempt to save your heart, brain, immune system etc you are a coward who lives in fear, and someone who is not really living their life, really 24/

Whereas the social norm in S Korea seems to be something like this: Covid is going to stay around, so we need to exercise caution in many situations "for personal health" (masking indoors and even outdoors). However, we balance this with other needs (e.g., restaurants) 25/

Now, which norm seems most repressive and freedom-suppressing to you: the Korean norm or the US norm? Personally, I have felt so liberated the past few days bc I don't feel like I need to apologize or that I'm being ridiculous or a coward for masking 26/

There may also be other sinister reasons for why the social norm in the US shifted so quickly. A lot of news coverage focused on racial disparities (more Black ppl and Indigenous ppl dying) and on the adverse outcomes for the immunocompromised and disabled people 27/

By focusing on these disparities, covid is no longer something that affects us all (which it does!) but something that happens to "them" (i.e., not me). Hence, I think white liberals have basically said "not my problem" and moved on from masking 28/

S Korea, on the other hand is much more homogenous. The greatest disparities are gender and class. Overall population health is better. So, it is easier to see covid as something that could affect "me", hence masking becomes for personal health 29/

When you think of yourself as potentially vulnerable, then it makes sense to protect yourself. The American public otoh, is massaged into thinking covid is someone else's problem. Hence the main advocates for masking are ppl with long covid, disabled people etc 30/

The people with long covid realize that it is not something that only affects people who had poor health to begin with. I realize, there is something very callous about the anti-mask norm because it explicitly throws people who are disabled and immunocompromised under the bus 31/

Hence, there is an added element, because we have (hopefully) not all become callous eugenicists who wish to kill people around us by not mitigating a virus. That added element is the YOLO: covid is going around forever, and we must not live in fear but live our best lives 32/

Except, there is no tension. You can live your best life as a society through the imperfect but consistent masking that e.g., Koreans do. I will note that fatalism ("it's going to be around forever") is also a denialist recipe (cf climate change, similar dynamic) 33/

In sum: the US anti-mask norm is harmful, makes people falsely believe covid is not their problem and also makes them throw disabled people under the bus. It's possible to have a different norm (cf South Korea) but that would not have been politically expedient 34/

This thread might be fun for @maosbot @BlairWilliams26 @SleepyJim0 /end

PS: another symptom of the US anti-mask norm is the weird uptick in social media accounts that will try to shame people who are cautious in spite of the norm as "being in a cult," "being mentally ill", "being effeminate" (for men) etc. I block and move on