Has Any Good Come From the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Introduction

The columnist Marilyn vos Savant was asked recently if anything good has come from the COVID-19 pandemic. Her answer was woefully incomplete so I aim to provide a better one here. Before I begin, though, I want to acknowledge that the pandemic has been tragic and of course I don’t want to minimize that. I merely hope that looking at silver linings can help us feel some gratitude.

Marilyn who??

Marilyn vos Savant is a columnist for Parade magazine, which comes tucked inside the Sunday paper. (Reading Parade is admittedly a waste of time, but the writing is so brain-dead simple, you can read the whole thing in about 40 seconds.) I’m often struck at how wrong Marilyn is, for being a supposed genius. For example, she explained the 40% college freshman attrition rate by saying, “In college, students must study subjects in which they have no interest and will never put to use.” This is both false and not the point. Students drop out because so many of our high schools don’t prepare students properly. (Given Marilyn’s defeatist attitude about college as an institution, should we be surprised she herself dropped out?)

On the topic of good coming from COVID, Marilyn acknowledged only that it might encourage people to wear masks when they’re sick. That was her whole answer, and it’s more of a hope (and probably a vain one) than a reality. And yet, there are a number of good things to come out of the pandemic, and the world’s response to it. What follows are just the more obvious silver linings.

The vaccine

Can you imagine the situation if there had never been a COVID-19 vaccine? Today, according to this article, the World Health Organization estimates that “nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems during the first two years of the pandemic.” But it would obviously have been worse without the vaccine. When’s the last time a vaccine was created on the fly, with a great reduction in governmental red tape, in time to save countless millions of lives? Hint: never. As described here, the worst five pandemics in history ended thus:

• Plague of Justinian—“No one left to die”
• Black Death—The invention of quarantine
• The Great Plague of London—Quarantine
• Smallpox—The first epidemic ended by a vaccine, but only after more than two centuries and countless millions dead
• Cholera—The discovery that bacterial infection was spreading via contaminated drinking water

The COVID-19 vaccine totally saved our bacon. Without it, we might have no end in sight with countless dead, and/or we’d all still be sheltering-in-place. The vaccine represents a giant leap forward in the development of vaccines in general; a tremendously encouraging example of scientific cooperation; and, despite a lot of whining I choose to ignore, a triumph in governments’ ability to produce and deliver the vaccine at scale. Today, two thirds of Americans have received the vaccine.

Granted, I’m accustomed to great medical care because I live in an affluent community and have top notch insurance, but I was astonished to be able to get all four of my shots with very little trouble scheduling appointments, and moreover without having to provide any insurance information, and without paying a dime. For those of us sufficiently clear-headed to appreciate all this, it’s cause for cautious optimism that our healthcare system isn’t completely hopeless.

Telecommuting

At the outset of the pandemic, I worked for a division of a company that officially disallowed working from home. Nevertheless, due to a special dispensation  I’d managed to negotiate with my management, I was allowed to telecommute four days a week (and yes, it made me plenty nervous to be the outlier). From March 2000—when my employer went entirely remote due to the pandemic—straight through to last month, my colleagues and I only went in to an office once. Our entire division now follows a “hybrid” working model of visiting the office just twice a month.

I am super stoked because my commute, from the Berkeley area to Sunnyvale, was absolutely soul-crushing. My colleagues—all of them—are similarly delighted with the new arrangement. And this change is permanent—our former HQ building was sold off. (When we want to meet in person, we do “hoteling,” which means finding an empty cubicle in a corporate building shared among divisions.) The pandemic forced my employer to try out the telecommuting model, and it ended up working far better than anyone had expected.

This isn’t an isolated case. According to this article, before the pandemic only 6% of employed Americans worked from home; by May 2020, over a third were telecommuting. And as of last October, according to this article, 25% were still telecommuting all the time, and another 20% part of the time. And as of April, according to this article, roughly 25% to 35% of workers are still working from home, though only 10% cite COVID-19 as the reason.

Think of how many hours of commuting are saved. By my rough math, about 38 million Americans are teleworking who used to commute, and we’re each saving an average of an hour of commuting per day. Given that transportation is the largest contributor to carbon pollution, this telecommuting arrangement is a huge benefit to the environment … and it was brought about by the pandemic. How could Marilyn vos Savant not mention any of this? For a genius, she sure doesn’t seem very thoughtful.

Less illness outside of COVID-19

Did you find you seldom got sick during shelter-in-place? I used to dread the cold and flu season every year, but since March of 2020 I’ve only been sick twice, and both times it was pretty mild. There’s not a ton of nationwide reporting on minor colds and such, but this article notes a sharp drop in flu cases during the pandemic. So that’s been something of a silver lining.

Of course it’s hard to get excited about not getting sick when we were stuck indoors and tolerating masks all the time, but I think there may be lasting benefit. All that emphasis on hand washing could engender permanent behavioral change. I for one always wash my hands thoroughly when I get home from being out and about, and I’m not thinking about COVID per se when I’m doing it: it’s truly automatic. And who knows, maybe Marilyn is right and many sick people will be masking up from now on before they go out in public.

More outdoor recreation

Obviously COVID has killed a lot of Americans—almost a million, as of this posting—but heart disease (as described here) is the leading cause of death in this country, claiming about 659,000 lives every year. Unlike COVID, rampant heart disease in the U.S. shows no signs of going away. With the obesity epidemic closely tied to heart disease numbers, I think it’s significant that outdoor recreation increased significantly during the pandemic, even during shelter-in-place.

This was my own observation, from encountering crazy numbers of hikers along the trails in our regional parks, but is also substantiated by various data. For example, this article declares that “in 2020, 53 percent of Americans ages 6 and over participated in outdoor recreation at least once, the highest participation rate on record,” and that “7.1 million more Americans participated in outdoor recreation in 2020 than in the year prior.” And this article cites a 63% increase in bicycle sales in June 2020 vs. the previous year and a 31% increase in camping gear sales.

Perhaps some of this change will be permanent, now that so many more people have discovered the joy of being outdoors. Suffice to say the pandemic did a better job exposing people to exercise than PSAs ever did.

More outdoor dining

Where I live, in the Bay Area, lots of restaurants dealt with the shelter-in-place by creating outdoor seating areas, taking advantage of relaxed restrictions on things like putting tables on sidewalks or building seating areas out into the road, with barriers to protect diners. Traffic and parking have not become noticeably more difficult; what you mainly notice is how much fun people seem to be having and how many of them (about 100%, by my count) say things like, “How come nobody thought of this before?”

Actually, all kinds of people thought of this before but were stonewalled by the various interests who put motor vehicle accommodation above all other priorities. In this article, a state lawmaker from San Francisco explains:

If a city had come forward before the pandemic and said, “Let’s dramatically expand outdoor dining,” there would have been a lot of pushback. Like, “Whoa, what’s going to happen to the neighborhood? We need parking.” This is not a mysterious unknown now. Not everybody likes it, but most people do. They love it. And cities will go through their own local decision-making. In San Francisco, the mayor has proposed an ordinance to make the outdoor dining program permanent.

Silver linings for high school kids?

It is widely understood that the pandemic has been particularly hard on teenagers (and I even provided an albeit jocular coping guide in these pages). But in terms of silver linings, I’ll ask you to consider that not all teenagers would call the pandemic a purely negative thing. For example, I asked my younger daughter, a high school senior, if she feels like anything good came of the pandemic. She immediately replied, “I got to see my friends more.”

This probably sounds pretty close to unbelievable, but her explanation matches what I observed myself of her behavior. The shelter-in-place didn’t forbid people from getting together outdoors in small numbers, and for the better part of two years my daughter constantly went for long walks with her friends. Before the pandemic, most of these kids’ lives were booked solid with extracurricular activities so they seldom got to just hang out. To me, their less structured pandemic days looked like a time machine, taking these kids back to my generation when kids did what they felt like instead of only what would look good on their college apps.

Obviously I won’t be able to cite all kinds of articles supporting any notion that my daughter’s experience was widespread, but I do note this article pointing out that “Suicide rates for all ages dropped by 5.6% in 2020 compared to 2019. But this is not entirely unusual. Known as the ‘pulling together’ effect, suicide rates tend to dip during shared experiences of catastrophe.” And this report on a survey on the wellbeing of families states that although 31% of children reported that their emotional/mental health got worse during the pandemic, 16% report that it actually got better. Again, the pandemic still sucked, but 16% is a silver lining. (I say “sucked” instead of “sucks” … is it really the case we can now start speaking of the pandemic in the past tense?)

Online schooling, though it has been almost universally assailed as a big negative overall, also has its positive side. A Johns Hopkins University article from May of 2020 quotes Beth Marshall, associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health and an assistant scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health:

The pandemic has given schools a push to move everything online. There will be an incredible utility for this even after the pandemic has ended. For instance, schools may now be able to tailor learning to specific kids by supplementing their classroom education with online material. It is often a struggle to meet the learning level of all students. With virtual content, students can access gifted and advanced learning opportunities that are otherwise unavailable…. The same is true for districts that are resource-poor and do not have enough textbooks for their students. Many of the texts that accompany curricula are now online. If we can continue to access these when we return and have a hybrid of online and in-person education, it might start to reduce some of the inequities we have in school systems.

Another thing my younger daughter mentioned as a positive is that with online schooling, she no longer had to get up as early and finally started getting all the sleep she needed. Her experience is corroborated by the same Johns Hopkins article. Tamar Mendelson, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health and Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, states:

Adolescents’ sleep clocks are programmed to go to sleep later in the night and wake up later in the day than children’s sleep clocks are. Adolescents can follow these rhythms to a greater extent now that they are not forced to wake up early to get to school, as long as they're getting an adequate amount of sleep.

(The article does caution that lack of routine can throw off a sleep schedule and lead to reduced sleep overall.)

Silver linings for college kids?

I asked my older daughter, a college junior, if she saw any benefits from the pandemic. Right off the bat, she cited three opportunities it created for her. Since she’s pre-med, for years she’s been on the lookout for healthcare-related volunteering opportunities, and was stoked to get work at a vaccination clinic. She was then able to find a paid position working a COVID hotline for students and parents, which led to a volunteer position at a hospital emergency department. She was able to handle all three gigs only because online schooling provided so much flexibility: with all her lectures recorded, she no longer had to work in the volunteer stuff around any kind of class schedule. In fact, she can even work a ten-hour shift on a weekday, which would have been unheard of pre-pandemic.

This flexibility also made getting required classes much easier, because she could double-book classes (i.e., enroll in classes that theoretically met at the same time). She also corroborates Beth Marshall’s comments about online schooling supplementing the classroom education with additional material for advanced students.

Meanwhile, since my daughter stayed on campus during remote learning due to these jobs, she made all kinds of new friends from among the international students who couldn’t go home. Sure, she’d have made friends anyway, but this widened the demographic from what she’d had in high school.

In closing

Next time somebody goes on a little long griping about the pandemic, or asks you if you see any silver lining, you can just … wow, I was about to suggest you refer him or her to this post. But of course that’s absurd, this essay is 2500 words! You’re a pretty special person to make it to the end … don’t kid yourself that your hypothetical interlocutor has that kind of patience. Just send him or her to Marilyn vos Savant’s column. Sure, it’s woefully incomplete and misses the most important points, but it’s only 100 words and she’s really, really smart.

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands
• Can COVID Anti-Vaxxers Be Reasoned With?
• COVID-19: Helping Teens Cope

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Can COVID Anti-Vaxxers Be Reasoned With?

Introduction

I came across some crudely written graffiti recently, spray-painted on a pillar. It read, “ANTI-VAXXERS PIE.” I was like, huh? Another pillar a quarter mile away had the same thing but the vandal’s skill had improved: it read, “ANTI-VAXXERS DIE.” I guess this made a little more sense, but how persuasive was this presumed to be? (This graffito was itself vandalized before I return to photograph it.)

At the other end of the spectrum is an article I read recently in The Atlantic titled “Stop Death Shaming.” I found this article as annoying as the graffiti. In this post I explain my annoyance, and examine the larger question of how we might persuade holdouts to finally get the COVID vaccine.

 Stop Death Shaming

What a stupid title, clearly intended to be shocking so as to attract readers, like clickbait. Of course nobody is “death shaming” because the dead can’t feel shame and nobody is so clueless as to scold a corpse. Meanwhile, the article doesn’t actually provide examples of anybody shaming the non-vaccinated. It does go on to reasonably bemoan the lack of constructive dialogue between those who believe in the COVID vaccine and those who don’t. It also usefully recounts a poll that ranked the top reasons anti-vaxxers list for abstaining:

• Potential side effects (just over half of respondents)
• Don’t trust the vaccines (nearly 40%)
• Don’t trust the government (a third)
• Don’t feel they need it (just under a quarter)
• Aren’t sure the vaccines are protective (22%)
• Don’t see COVID-19 as a major threat (17%)

The author concludes that at least these people show “significant willingness to consider vaccination” (though I can’t figure out how she arrives at this conclusion), and describes a dialogue she had with her uncle about why he and his wife aren’t vaccinated. The uncle asks a few questions, puts his willful ignorance on display, mentions the “little bit of research” he’s done, and concludes, “We’re not, you know—we’re still thinking about it.” The writer wraps up this little vignette by saying, “I felt good about our talk.”

You know what? I don’t feel good about their talk. This guy, and anti-vaxxers like him, have had over six months to ponder this decision. When are they going to get around to their “research”? They’re dithering while people are dying, and this Atlantic writer seems to think that’s fine as long as nobody hurts anyone else’s feelings.

But what really irks me the most about the article is that this journalist misses the biggest point of all: she seems to think it’s perfectly acceptable to only ever expect people to act in their own self-interest. Her uncle, and people like him, are failing to understand or admit that this is a matter of public health. In fact, they are failing to realize that there’s even such a thing as the greater good. In short they are thinking selfishly. This is the real crux of the problem.

Really?

Now wait, you might be thinking. If somebody believes the vaccine works, and gets vaccinated because he or she doesn’t want to get COVID, isn’t that also acting in one’s own self interest? Yes, of course. But this is a situation where one’s self interest happens to coincide with that of the rest of the population. This is what makes it so frustrating when selfish people do the wrong thing to the detriment of themselves and everyone else. It’s a lose-lose.

I suppose you might also question whether selfishness is really the core of our dilemma. Given that all these people are fixating on outlandish fictions such as the risks of side effects, a nefarious government, or the idea that the vaccine is somehow unnecessary, isn’t the real problem that they’re all just as dumb as a sack of hammers?

Okay, now that is not constructive, and I don’t believe it’s even true. According to the New York Times, about thirty percent of the adult U.S. population hasn’t had a shot yet. I don’t think 77 million people actually lack the mental capability to understand that the vaccines do work, that there hasn’t been a rash of side effects, that COVID really is highly contagious, and that you can contract and spread it unknowingly. I think the problem is that people are so scared, as they struggle to adapt to this insanely bizarre new reality, that they’re simply not thinking clearly.

Neuroscience and the vaccine holdouts

Perhaps a shallow dip into the literature of social neuroscience can help illustrate what is going on here. According to this article by Dr. David Rock, a cognitive scientist, “Much of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward (Gordon, 2000),” and “several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs (Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2008).”  When humans feel threatened in a social situation, the “resources available for overall executive functions in the prefrontal cortex decrease.… Due to the overly vigilant amygdala, more tuned to threats than rewards, the threat response is often just below the surface and easily triggered.… This discovery that our brain is inherently attuned to threatening stimuli helps explain many disquieting parts of life,” including “why the media focuses on bad news.”

In evaluating how this plays out in social situations, Dr. Rock focuses on “five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness” (which form the handy acronym SCARF).  Understanding how to approach these realms, he contends, is the key to motivating people, particularly when they’re facing the uncomfortable prospect of significant change: “For example, a perceived threat to one’s status activates similar brain networks to a threat to one’s life. In the same way, a perceived increase in fairness activates the same reward circuitry as receiving a monetary reward.”

So what does this have to do with trying to reason with anti-vaxxers? I would argue that just giving them their say, and being a good listener, as the Atlantic writer does, won’t change anything; nor will directly attacking their stated reasons for declining the vaccine (which are really just positions—you could even say excuses—rather than firm beliefs, not that they’re up for discussion). I think you need to cast the entire matter into a new light, that shocks the anti-vaxxer into a reassessing his or her status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

How to reframe the conversation

So here’s what I propose, should you find yourself in a position to discuss the COVID vaccine with, say, an uncle willing to hear you out. Instead of denying the risk of side effects, assume that they’re real, and focus on the utter selfishness that the anti-vaxxer displays when letting other people assume this risk. “So let me get this straight, Uncle Clyde,” you could say. “You’re so concerned about side effects, and the possible meddling of our untrustworthy government, that you’re going to stand by and let people like me take that risk so you don’t have to? So you’re basically looking out for number one? So if you were on the Titanic, you’d be elbowing women and children out of the way to get to a lifeboat? And in an active shooter situation, you might avail yourself of a human shield?” This argument would certainly light up the status, relatedness, and fairness realms described in the SCARF model. I wouldn’t expect the dialogue to continue much longer from here, but you’ll have presented Uncle Clyde’s amygdala with a new series of threats, and he might just start to reconsider the clever stories he’s been telling himself about vaccination. At some point he might even knuckle down and enlist the support of his neocortex.

As for your utterly selfish cousin Clint, who maintains that he’s robust and healthy and could totally kick COVID’s ass, you could say, “Oh, I see … and the possibility that your immune system is so good you could be infected but asymptomatic doesn’t concern you, because spreading the virus to Grandma isn’t your problem? So, if you were a smoker, you’d be the kind who totally blows smoke in people’s faces, and if they don’t like it fuck ‘em? I guess this is fine, until Grandma dies of COVID and me and the rest of the family blame all you for the rest of our lives.” This seems like a pretty decent appeal to the Status and Relatedness realms.

Let’s move on to our brother Bill who conveniently sits out the fight against the coronavirus by pretending COVID-19 isn’t a major threat. “So Bill … If this were a war that killed 670,000 Americans instead of a disease, and you were young enough to be a soldier, would you enlist, or just hope that the evil dictator running amok calmed down and called back his troops because he changed his mind? Or would you find some excuse, like flat feet or microscopic testicles, to stay home and hide out instead of facing the enemy?” His sense of relatedness, fairness, and status would have to be reevaluated. Is this shaming? Yes, of course it’s shaming! But it’s not death shaming, it’s selfish asshole shaming. Shaming is required here because these anti-vaxxers are shameless.

Now, when it comes to the poll about why people were declining the vaccine, there was of course the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to admit to: the pressure to follow their political party’s lead. This wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the poll results, but as detailed here, vaccination rates track closely to political party. This is primarily a GOP thing, obviously, though I blame the extreme right wing media more than the politicians. After all, as the Times reports, Mitch McConnell is encouraging Americans to get the vaccine, as is Mitt Romney, and even Donald Trump says he’s a “big believer.” The anti-vaccine mania is largely the fault of heartless, soulless, utterly self-serving media shitheads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity who understand that keeping their acolytes’ amygdalae in a state of perpetual frenzy is instrumental in creating the seething, hyperbolic division among Americans that keeps ratings high. I think it’s very telling in this interview that twice Trump brings up the vaccine, and twice Hannity completely changes the subject.

Vaccination behavior shaped by political party can also slop over into the Democrat camp. This article in the San Francisco Chronicle, discussing various reasons locals gave for avoiding the vaccine, describes one person’s viewpoint: “It was bad enough that she felt nervous about the vaccine’s side effects. But it also felt like former President Donald Trump was mixed up in it all. ‘Trump said, “The vaccine is here because of me.” And I was like, do I really want it if he’s behind it?’ Maggin said. ‘But people feel that people who don’t get vaccinated are Trump supporters!’” The article goes on to ask, “What’s a frightened liberal to do?” I’ll tell you want to do: stop worrying about political parties, stop being bullied by biased blowhards, and think for your damn self! That could do wonders for your sense of autonomy.

I’m almost done, but I want to take a little more time to consider fairness, the F in the SCARF model. I think people often do make fairness a priority; as Dr. Rock points out, it “may be part of the explanation as to why people experience internal rewards for doing volunteer work to improve their community; it is a sense of decreasing the unfairness in the world.” Consider how many people, surely yourself included, blithely exceed the speed limit, but how few would illegally park in a handicapped spot. Freeway accidents are one of the leading causes of accidental death in America, but that risk is abstracted so most of us don’t think much about it. But we can easily imagine a person in a wheelchair being inconvenienced because we wrongly took her spot. What would be more embarrassing to you: being pulled over for speeding, or getting caught parking in a handicapped spot?

So to appeal to the anti-vaxxer’s built-in sense of fairness, it would be useful to stimulate his imagination a little. “So, Uncle Bruce,” you might say, “is this pandemic inconvenient for you? Kind of a pain?” You could draw him out on the indignities of endless Zoom calls, etc. Invite him to share a story about the most awful thing that’s ever happened to him at work. Then say, “Hey Uncle Bruce, do you ever chew out flight attendants when your flight is delayed?” He’d say of course not. Ask if he’s ever stiffed a waiter on his tip. “Hell no!” Uncle Bruce would declare. You then reply, “Of course not, you wouldn’t deliberately cause trouble for a working person, you always show them respect.” Then you go on to say, “You might be aware that ICUs at hospitals across the country are filling up with COVID patients. Did you know many of them are straining under the burden of two to three times the normal number of patients? Did you know almost all of these patients need to be intubated? Do you have a sense of how gnarly a procedure that is? Do you know how hard it is to bring a patient back from that? Did you know doctors are having more patients die than at any other time in their careers, and that many ICU docs have now treated more patients for COVID than for any other malady? Can you imagine how hard it is for them to tell the family members of their patient that he isn’t going to make it? Look, I know you didn’t sign up for boring Zoom calls when you took the job with TechCorp, but these doctors didn’t sign up for  a brutal, endless onslaught of their ICUs being inundated with mostly doomed patients either. I’m sure you’ve read how unvaccinated people like yourself are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID … I just want to make sure you can kind of imagine how that pans out. Oh, don’t worry, these doctors would never shame anyone, though I talked to one who said he actually wished the fact of his patients’ non-vaccinated condition wasn’t in their charts because that just reminds him how huge a problem this is, and rubs it in how utterly avoidable all this would be if people just accepted the vaccine. And don’t get me wrong, when talking to the non-vaccinated family member of a terminal patient, a doctor would never say anything like, ‘This non-vaccination policy you have … how would you say that’s working out for your family?’ They have much more tact than that, they’re unfailingly polite despite being overworked and losing so many patients. And if you yourself did land in the ICU with COVID, and your doctor was telling me there’s not much more he can do, and I was begging him to do everything he can, he would never say anything like, ‘Would you say your Uncle Bruce did everything he could?’ Because doctors aren’t about shaming anybody. And I’m not either, believe me, I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, and I know you’re afraid of needles. But did you know that when an intubation goes sideways, a mixture of blood and saliva from the COVID patient’s throat can spray all over the doctor? I’m just sayin’. But hey, take your time deciding, it’s all good. It’s totally your choice, a deeply personal matter. And don’t worry, if you do end up dying of COVID, all of us family members who survive because we’re vaccinated will be very gracious at your funeral. Nobody will say, ‘It’s sure a shame about Uncle Bruce, though this could have been avoided if he hadn’t been such a selfish, stubborn old dumbass.’ We would never say that because that would be death shaming.”

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

COVID wristbands

Introduction

I’ve had my first COVID vaccination shot, and more and more of my friends and family are getting theirs. It feels like there’s finally an end in sight. It’s so tempting to give in to this or that temptation, such as to finally ditch the mask. Of course I won’t yet, for two reasons. One, with variants etc. it’s still possible for a vaccinated person to spread the coronavirus. Two, from a social perspective I don’t want to scare anyone. That’s what this post is about: signaling to others when we’re no longer a threat. Is there a simple way of doing this?

Mask as token

A face mask prevents the spread of two things: airborne virus-laden droplets, and fear. Much of the time, this second thing is arguably more important. When I go for a walk (whether on a trail in a regional park or just in my neighborhood) and encounter another person, it’s almost comical how much evasive action we both take. If our masks aren’t already on we swiftly apply them in a practiced motion, and then we greatly alter our course so as to put at least ten feet between us, even when it means going out into the middle of the street. Most of the time this is unnecessary. It’s just a social gesture that says, “I respect your right to not get COVID.”

The fact is, three conditions must exist for the virus to spread: close proximity, lack of good air flow, and prolonged exposure. If you’re indoors, maskless, and talking loudly in someone’s face for several minutes or more, sure—that’s dangerous. A five-second encounter on a fire trail isn’t. Nevertheless, I always pull up my mask because not everybody understands this, or believes it, or feels comfortable tempting fate. It’s easy enough to wear a mask and I’m happy to do it.

Still, I get dirty looks. Sometimes I’m a little slow pulling my mask over my face, or somebody appears to resent my practice of only having my mask in place when I encounter others. (These are the folks who wear a mask while driving alone with their car windows rolled up.) One time I was at home and stepped across the sidewalk, unmasked, to get something out of my car and encountered somebody whose stroll brought her unexpectedly into my death zone. She scolded me, “You should always wear a mask when you go to your car because a person might be coming!” I replied, “Oh my god, thank you so much for pointing that out. I never would have put that together.” She smiled smugly and continued on (either oblivious to my deadpan sarcasm, or even deader-pan than I).

Why are safety-minded people so prickly? It’s because as babies they were given all the routine vaccinations against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, etc. and they’re all autistic.

Note: that was a joke, and if you got all excited because you’re an anti-vaxxer, you’re a joke and should go somewhere else for your “news.”

So once I’m fully vaccinated, will I still wear a mask and give everyone a comically wide berth? Sure. After all, that’s preferable to irking people wherever I go. But wouldn’t it be nice if people could be that much more relaxed around me because they could tell, somehow, that in addition to my mask I have all the antibodies I need to keep the virus from turning me into a highly infectious disease-spreading machine?

How about I’ve-been-vaccinated wristbands?

So I got to thinking: what about a rubber (well, silicone) wristband, like those yellow Livestrong bands from the early aughts? A color-colored wristband worn by those lucky folks who have had the COVID vaccine could suddenly become all the rage, and overnight would come a universal symbol for greatly reduced contagiousness. Next time somebody gave me stink-eye for being a little slow on the mask-draw, I could flash my wristband on they ass, and then they’d be like, “No worries, my bad!”

Once I had this idea, I figured I’d write a blog post about it which would immediately go viral, and we’d be well on our way to wristbands being standard for everyone who gets the vaccine. Five seconds later I realized that if I’ve had this idea, of course countless others have as well. Sure enough, a cursory Google search turned up countless heartwarming stories about how “two Seattle techies,” a “Carpenteria man,” an “RIT alum,” a “government contractor,” and a “father and son” came up with this ingenious idea to promote vaccination while reducing social anxiety through been-vaxxed wristbands. All these news stories seem to have been written in a vacuum, taking it on faith that nobody else had thought of this simple social signaling mechanism.

Do these wristbands work?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never actually seen anyone rocking the I’ve-been-vaccinated wristband. For now, it looks like a movement that’s just spinning its wheels. So what’s missing? Well, think about this: why didn’t the Livestrong wristbands come in a variety of colors? It’s because they had to be instantly recognizable in order to convey the message “I support Lance Armstrong’s amazing cancer foundation.”

You can chuckle and roll your eyes all you want now, but the Livestrong Foundation sold 80 million of those wristbands before Lance got popped. They were all the rage and the various knock-offs, like the grey “APATHY” wristband I somehow acquired, never saw significant sales.

I don’t think the current COVID wristbands will ever be adopted because they’re not distinctive enough to mean anything. It’s like if a wedding ring could be made of any material or worn on any finger … how would we know what’s merely decorative vs. declarative?

On top of this, the current crop of COVID vaccination wristbands are pretty ugly and/or cheesy. Let’s look at a few. Here’s a pretty revolting color:

Compared to this awful green, the maillot jaune color of the Livestrong wristbands was like the new black. Now look with these orange-white numbers:

They remind me of Creamsicles. Yuck. Here’s an even grosser color, with an embarrassing label, “I AM A COVID WARRIOR,” into the bargain:

This plain white one is just poorly executed, like the bottom-of-the-barrel swag from a trade show (remember those?):

This one is particularly ugly in color, and “GOT THE SHOT” with the silly coronavirus-shaped Os is just unforgivably tacky:

Now, this fancy bracelet version is particularly problematic: it can’t be read without glasses or myopia; wouldn’t be popular among dudes; and could cause skin problems for those who require 14-karat gold jewelry.

The father/son team wristband, stating “Vaccinated and Proud,” looks like the cheesy toy from a Cracker Jack or cereal box, and is not only unwisely political but kind of arrogant. Proud that you were lucky enough to get a vaccination appointment? Proud of believing in science? Proud of braving that scary needle? Give me a break. Meanwhile, who could read the text from over six feet away … Superman?

On top of these aesthetic concerns, I’m not about to fork out real money for a cheap rubber wristband. Prices look to be in the $1.30 to $5.00 range (or $34 for the bracelet) and you often have to buy a 5-or 10-pack. This seems like a ripoff, particularly if these wristbands don’t become ubiquitous among the vaccinated, so I just look like a random solo douchebag wearing one.

My analysis of the problem here? This is one of those times when the private sector just isn’t up to the job. It’s time for the government to step in.

Hey CDC – you make the wristbands!

The solution is obvious. The CDC needs to develop a totally standardized rubber wristband, embossed with a non-embarrassing label like “C19 VACCINATED.” They should manufacture them by the millions, and ship them to vaccine distributors to give away to everyone who receives a shot. It wouldn’t be an indicator of anyone’s personal style or fashion, but more like a government-issued ID of sorts so it’d simply be a matter of public health to wear one. The color should be something muted but also completely distinctive. I propose Celeste #227, the strange milky blue-green created by Bianchi, the Italian bicycle company. Here’s a swatch:

Understated, distinctive, and utilitarian … so much easier to adopt than the current tacky hodgepodge. Get some major celebrities to sport them, and you’d have a nationwide phenomenon in no time.

So if anyone reading this is close personal buds with Dr. Fauci, or if you’re some kind of big shot Internet influencer, please get this going. My second shot is only a week away…

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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