What the hell are Americans thinking?
With an average of nearly 200,000 new cases of new coronary pneumonia occurring every day in the United States, experts say that “behavior and cold weather” are behind the surge currently sweeping the country.
According to a calculation by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the past week’s epidemic has been so bad that new coronets have surpassed coronary heart disease as the number one cause of death in the United States.
However, prevention mechanisms in the United States have not been upgraded on the scale needed. While many people in this country wear masks and follow body distance guidelines, many still do not. Wearing a mask is still not mandatory in 15 states. Only seven states have issued home orders or curfews, and a growing number of businesses and trade associations are suing the governments that issue these orders, claiming that they violate individual liberties.
A coordinated response is important, the most important of which continues to be frequent hand washing, masks, and distance. According to the latest model from the University of Washington, if 95 percent of the population wore masks, the number of deaths from the new crown could be reduced by 66,000 by April 1 of next year. President-elect Joe Biden intends to do the same, telling CNN last Thursday that, as one of his first acts as president, he will ask Americans to commit to wearing masks for 100 days.
The question is, what about the time between now and Biden’s inauguration? What’s more, without the understanding and cooperation of Americans and administrations everywhere, it would be difficult for the 100-day mask requirement to be implemented.
Many people are asking, what is wrong with Americans? Why are most people unwilling to make sacrifices to save lives?
Increase
Trananda Graves, who runs a travel company in Keller, Texas, went to Nashville, Tennessee, with her family on Thanksgiving. Graves thought they were being very cautious: after seeing how crowded the flights were, she decided to travel by car instead. And the holiday gathering, where the family met only relatives, was not too large, with “less than 20 people.” Graves is also already looking ahead to the Christmas and New Year’s holiday season, and she expects to see an increase in travel planning business during the holidays, with several tour groups already wanting to go to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve and herself planning to go to her mother’s house for Christmas – everything seems to be pretty much as normal for them.
With a surge in new crown cases across the country, public health officials are warning people to cancel their Thanksgiving travel plans in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The problem is, most people don’t listen.
NBC reports that last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, was the busiest day for travel at airports since the outbreak began. And according to an analysis of data from Street Light Data, a transportation consulting firm, motor vehicle travel on Thanksgiving was only 5 percent less than during the same period in 2019.
Many people out on vacation, like the Graves family, think they’re doing enough. But Cindy Friedman, a Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official, said at a briefing this week, “If only a small percentage of these travelers have asymptomatic infections of, then hundreds of thousands of people will be infected, moving from one community to another.”
Health experts have long warned that the holiday season will result in a spike in new coronavirus cases as people increasingly gather indoors. A week after the holiday season, the number of new coronary deaths and hospitalizations hit record highs. On December 3 alone, 215,000 new positive cases and more than 2,800 deaths were reported, an 8 percent increase from two weeks earlier.
The record hospitalization rate follows the recent spike in cases. On Sunday, 101,000 people were hospitalized with the virus, marking the fifth consecutive day that the number of hospitalizations in the United States exceeded 100,000. And Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, calculates that the situation is such that hospitals are running out of beds that doctors and nurses are being forced to choose which patients can be treated and which cannot. Some patients who met the criteria for hospitalization earlier this year are not admitted without a bed, and an estimated one-third to half are sent home. Some will be sicker at home. Some may die at home.
Spear Shield
Why have new crown cases been on the rise since the beginning of the fall, but people have been more indifferent? There are many factors: inconsistent messages from the administration, failure to enlist the voluntary cooperation of the public in complying with the safety measures, underestimation of the size and duration of the new crown, and public fatigue with the restrictions imposed.
Various surveys have shown that many Americans are no longer cooperating with the adoption of social distance measures. To be sure, many Americans are still heeding the advice of officials to limit their time in public places, avoid small gatherings, and stay away from large crowds. But a Gallup poll conducted in September found that the number of people reporting doing all of these things is trending downward and is at its lowest level since March.
In a recent national survey of more than 2,000 U.S. residents, many participants said they did not plan to follow public health recommendations when engaging in social activities. More than one-third said they plan to attend parties of 10 or more people; one-third said they would not ask friends or family to wear masks; one-quarter said they would not observe social distances; and 18 percent said they would not ask those with new crown symptoms to stay away.
On Dec. 1, the U.S. also released the results of one of the largest nationwide surveys to date. Researchers have questioned thousands of Americans every month since April, and the percentage of people taking steps to prevent the spread of the virus plummeted between April and October. For example, the amount of time people now spend at restaurants, at work, at the gym, and at church has tripled from what it was in April.
Significant disparities have emerged between different types of people in their attitudes toward the epidemic. Women are more likely than men to maintain social distance. Asians and African-Americans are more likely than whites to do so. Older and more educated people were also more cautious. There is also a partisan divide. This spring, the divide between Democrats and Republicans was very small, but that gap turned into a chasm over the summer.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, suggests that this may have something to do with American social psychology: “Our country doesn’t like to take the small, incremental steps that countless public health experts have suggested. We are a get-rich-quick society – always wanting miracle cures and remedies, rather than relying on simple, effective tools. Americans don’t want to wear masks or sacrifice vacations with family and friends; they just want a vaccine to get us back on our feet quickly.”
And Ester Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, argues that most people who ignore public health recommendations may either be unaware of the risks they face or do not believe that the recommended behavior will protect them. Social norms also have a strong influence on decision-making. Because the United States did not have uniform norms in the early days of the epidemic, wearing a mask and keeping one’s distance remained unpopular in some places.
So, how can more people be persuaded to be aware of the dangers? Psychologists believe that you may not know the pain until the knife is cut into you (or a friend or relative).
Waiting for the Tipping Point
For Craig Buescher, neoconaviruses weren’t a big deal to begin with. Nonetheless, he felt he was pretty careful.
He wore a mask in public most of the time. He limited his circle of friends, but still met seven or eight people. He follows the rules to a large extent, but admits to relaxing occasionally.
Buescher is 69 years old and in good health. He thinks that even if he were infected with neoconjunctivitis, it wouldn’t be that bad.
He still doesn’t know how he got it, but it’s very bad. During his nine days in the hospital, each breath felt like a knife cutting into his lungs, and the doctors seriously began to consider the possibility of putting him on a ventilator, which convinced him that he not only needed to be more careful not to get infected, but that he should convince others to do the same.
Despite attempts to change social norms, experts say that the most effective factor in changing people’s behavior may still be individual expectations of danger. Psychologists hope that there is a tipping point, after which people who have had personal experience will be more cautious and influence those around them, which may influence the trajectory of the epidemic.
The experience of contracting the new crown has turned Buescher into a different person – and although he’s unlikely to be contagious now, he wants to set a good example. He keeps two or three masks in each car in the house, and he’s streamlined his social circle to only interact with one other couple. He and his wife spent Thanksgiving in Zoom with their four grown children, and they’re also rethinking their Christmas plans, so they won’t be partying anyway.
Buscher has also become an evangelist for the prevention of new crowns. He has been sharing his experience with neo-crown pneumonia with others on Facebook. He recently urged fellow Nebraskans to be cautious at a news conference with Gov. Pete Ricketts.
Buescher said others changed their own behavior when news of his serious illness spread through their town. Chuck Baum, one of his friends, said that at first they thought maybe it was just “crying wolf,” despite all the media coverage of the epidemic. It wasn’t until they began to learn that people were dying that it became a reality.
A friend of Baum’s in his 60s died of the disease in March of this year. His college roommate’s father died in October in New Canaan. He also had a client who died two days after being diagnosed.
Baum said the biggest change he’s made since seeing his friend die in New Crown is that he no longer goes to his 92-year-old mother’s house. He has visited her twice in the past month, but has only dared to open the kitchen door and screen door and talk to her outside.
The change comes as no surprise to psychologist Donald Edmondson, who says that as more and more people in a community become seriously ill and die from the new crown, the norms in the area may eventually change.
He said, “There has to be a tipping point where a feedback loop starts to change people’s behavior.”
Talking to people about the dangers of the virus can also affect their behavior, experts say, but only if the information comes from someone they trust. Some people are mired in disinformation, and experts find it difficult to convince them to change their behavior. According to a Gallup/KnightFoundation poll conducted in September, nearly one in five U.S. adults believe the new corona is less deadly than seasonal flu, and 41 percent believe the official number of deaths from the new corona is exaggerated.
Health officials say they will continue to use media campaigns to influence public perceptions of masks and vaccines. Liz Sharlot, communications director for the Mississippi Department of Health, helped lead the department’s “It’s True” campaign, a video series in which the health department interviewed a number of neo-crown survivors, health care workers and family members of the deceased. She is now planning to do another series of public service announcements, which will include filming the first group of vaccinated health care workers.
In Detroit, a $5 million campaign called Rona 4 Real is credited with changing the habits of Michigan’s youth. This summer, young Michiganders began to let their guard down when the number of cases decreased, leading to a small increase in the epidemic there. Now, local leaders are growing increasingly concerned about the prospect of a winter spike, and they’re filming new commercials encouraging Michiganders to follow best safety practices in hopes that this will turn the tide “down the curve.
No amount of science can save this increasingly urgent crisis without the slightest collective sacrifice.
Recent Comments