This is a good angle. It's a treasure to be psychologically comfortable in crowds. Any situation where we are constantly acutely attentive to strangers is exhausting--say, for example, if you feel menaced by the people around you. This is precisely the point that women and many people of color describe and it's concretely connected to a whole range of health issues, both mental and physical. The folks who say "well just look at the actuarial tables, rationally recalculate your risks, and don't think that way any more" (they sometimes say it to women and people of color, too) are the folks who don't actually have a very well-grounded or scientifically rigorous understanding of how social psychology works: much of that kind of attention is "fast thinking", not conscious, carefully mediated thought, and it can't be turned off and on like a lightswitch.
If so, what is your current great concern about contracting Covid? Do you really think it poses a greater threat to you and yours than does the flu? If it doesn't, why such extreme avoidant behavior?
I'm trying to understand here. I'm genuinely puzzled as to what your thinking might be on this.
I don't want to have to isolate for ten days, or keep my kids home from school for whatever the "close contact of a positive test" time is these days. I'm not worried about my health, it's more the annoyance of the countermeasures.
I had it in October 2020. I've since been vaccinated twice and boostered. I don't spend any time or energy on whether others are masked or not. Could I get it again? Maybe. But I could get TB or ebola, too. Not something to worry about.
Look, quite aside from the fact that even if it is "just the flu" that doesn't mean you just dive in and are indifferent to getting sick, at least some of our continuous partial attention to strangers in public places during a pandemic is about recalculating our sense of the trustworthiness and social affinities in our communities and society.
When I'm driving, I take note of what looks like seriously sociopathic behavior. (It's what draws people to the subreddit r/IdiotsInCars--witnessing the reality of that kind of driving.) If I see a little of it now and again, it makes me feel good--hey, I'm responsible, and so are most people! I take driving seriously! If I see a lot of it, it makes me feel bad and threatened even if in actuarial terms my risk is still not that high because I'm starting to feel like my caution, attentiveness, and adherence to rules is not widely shared, that I'm surrounded by people who really don't give a crap about other people. All the more so because a lot of psychological research on driving and traffic shows that because the only thing we know about other drivers generally is their behavior as drivers, and we tend to see that as a revelation of their overall character.
To some extent, attention to what other people are doing in the pandemic is not "I need to get out of here, I'm personally at risk", it's "WTF is up with that guy there who is coughing and isn't wearing a mask in the supermarket, why not just wear a mask, dammit, it's not a big deal!" When that tips to "holy shit, half the people here aren't wearing a mask, what's going on?" it's no longer about disapproval of a few isolated people, it's a sense that your understanding of a sensible consideration for the health and welfare of others is out of line with what some substantial group of other people think.
This is a good angle. It's a treasure to be psychologically comfortable in crowds. Any situation where we are constantly acutely attentive to strangers is exhausting--say, for example, if you feel menaced by the people around you. This is precisely the point that women and many people of color describe and it's concretely connected to a whole range of health issues, both mental and physical. The folks who say "well just look at the actuarial tables, rationally recalculate your risks, and don't think that way any more" (they sometimes say it to women and people of color, too) are the folks who don't actually have a very well-grounded or scientifically rigorous understanding of how social psychology works: much of that kind of attention is "fast thinking", not conscious, carefully mediated thought, and it can't be turned off and on like a lightswitch.
I'm kind of baffled.
I assume you have been fully vaccinated, right?
If so, what is your current great concern about contracting Covid? Do you really think it poses a greater threat to you and yours than does the flu? If it doesn't, why such extreme avoidant behavior?
I'm trying to understand here. I'm genuinely puzzled as to what your thinking might be on this.
I don't want to have to isolate for ten days, or keep my kids home from school for whatever the "close contact of a positive test" time is these days. I'm not worried about my health, it's more the annoyance of the countermeasures.
I had it in October 2020. I've since been vaccinated twice and boostered. I don't spend any time or energy on whether others are masked or not. Could I get it again? Maybe. But I could get TB or ebola, too. Not something to worry about.
Look, quite aside from the fact that even if it is "just the flu" that doesn't mean you just dive in and are indifferent to getting sick, at least some of our continuous partial attention to strangers in public places during a pandemic is about recalculating our sense of the trustworthiness and social affinities in our communities and society.
When I'm driving, I take note of what looks like seriously sociopathic behavior. (It's what draws people to the subreddit r/IdiotsInCars--witnessing the reality of that kind of driving.) If I see a little of it now and again, it makes me feel good--hey, I'm responsible, and so are most people! I take driving seriously! If I see a lot of it, it makes me feel bad and threatened even if in actuarial terms my risk is still not that high because I'm starting to feel like my caution, attentiveness, and adherence to rules is not widely shared, that I'm surrounded by people who really don't give a crap about other people. All the more so because a lot of psychological research on driving and traffic shows that because the only thing we know about other drivers generally is their behavior as drivers, and we tend to see that as a revelation of their overall character.
To some extent, attention to what other people are doing in the pandemic is not "I need to get out of here, I'm personally at risk", it's "WTF is up with that guy there who is coughing and isn't wearing a mask in the supermarket, why not just wear a mask, dammit, it's not a big deal!" When that tips to "holy shit, half the people here aren't wearing a mask, what's going on?" it's no longer about disapproval of a few isolated people, it's a sense that your understanding of a sensible consideration for the health and welfare of others is out of line with what some substantial group of other people think.