Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
COVID won. A majority of Americans accept that.
Americans watched the stages of grief play out. At the very beginning we saw Trump deny COVID. There was no COVID here. Then it was barely here. Don't test so much, he said. That is Denial.
Then Anger. At first Trump gushed at how cooperative China was, and then turned to anger at the "China virus." It was a deliberate attack by our enemy, he said. And maybe Andrew Fauci was in weaponizing it. Anger.
We watched Bargaining play out in the efforts by Trump and then Biden to control the disease. Bargaining is the long, exhausting period in the war on COVID. COVID had its early streak, then we got vaccines and it looked like we had won. Then delta turned the game for COVID. Then boosters evened the score. We are stuck in midfield, with more-virulent but less deadly omicron. The vaccinated felt personally safe, mostly, then felt the let-down realizing the vaccinated could get COVID and spread it. Meanwhile, the COVID-concerned see the maskless stand next to them in stores and gather at events.
The Bargaining phase is deeply unsatisfactory, breeding discouragement and the Depression stage. Being COVID-compliant feels like being the designated driver at a party. The unvaccinated gather and want schools open and maskless. They don't seem to worry about COVID, and still almost none of them die. Some do--like my anti-vaxxer cousin--but by dying he disappears and people remove his anti-vaccination and pro-Trump signs. Herman Cain probably caught COVID at a Trump event in Tucson, then died. We don't hear from him anymore. Meanwhile, the people who got COVID and lived are on TV and podcasts saying COVID is overhyped.
Bargaining frustrates the COVID-compliant. We are impatient and feel helpless to motivate the unvaccinated. They fill the hospitals. I feel flashes of anger at them. Meanwhile the COVID-unconcerned resent vaccine mandates and the public health scolds. It is lose-lose. No wonder we are Depressed.
Acceptance is where Americans are. A college classmate said "Shame on you, Peter," when I wrote about acceptance two weeks ago. He works in an overcrowded hospital.
Monmouth University polls have credibility and rigor. Their survey reported:
Fully 7 in 10 Americans (70%) agree with the sentiment that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives” – including 78% of those who report having gotten Covid and 65% of those who say they have not been infected.
Americans do not think we won the battle against COVID. They think we lost. They don't care. It is like our leaving Afghanistan. The war is hopeless. Stop fighting. Move on. Monmouth reports:
Only one-third of the public (34%) feels the country will get the outbreak under control and return to normal by the end of the year. In fact, more than 1 in 4 (28%) now believe a return to normalcy will never happen, which is up from 22% who felt this way in September and just 6% who were similarly pessimistic exactly a year ago.
My cohort of friends are mostly older Boomers, educated, and politically liberal. We got immunized and boosted and are careful in public spaces. We are in the minority who have not yet accepted. I expect another "shame on you, Peter," letter. I am not happy with Acceptance but I recognize it as the new political reality. Another reality is that if Democrats don't adopt something like the position taken by Colorado's Democratic Governor Jared Polis, and end mandates and masks, going "back to normal," they will have badly misread the American public.
Acceptance means more anti-vaxxers will die. So be it. It means more vaccinated-but-vulnerable people will die, too. They deserve better, but Americans are OK with that. All of us run a greater risk of new variants from the unvaccinated, but the disease is worldwide and we will face new variants when they come. COVID won. COVID is everywhere.
Democrats could easily misread the moment and mood. It is still a democracy. There is an election coming up. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Acceptance does not mean giving up. It doesn't mean taking off the mask if you care either about your own health or your neighbor's. Acceptance just means perceiving reality and working with it. In my world, acceptance is following the infection rate, taking vaccines and using other prophylactic measures, based on the results of scientific inquiry. It might not mean zero risk, but for some folks, due to their own vulnerabilities, it might be pretty close to zero. And a disregard for the risk to me, individually, doesn't mean I have the right to disregard the safety of the person next to me in the Costco checkout line. I'm pretty sure that for you, Peter, acceptance will not mean, "Oh, to hell with it, might as well join that chicken pox party." Definitely not for me.