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People complain that going to the shore is a careless act during a pandemic, but the science so far suggests otherwise
Link information
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- Title
- Scolding Beachgoers Isn't Helping
- Authors
- Zeynep Tufekci
- Published
- Jul 4 2020
- Word count
- 598 words
Anecdata:
The little stretch of lake resort towns I live among is experiencing its own COVID renaissance right now. There's a very good chance the Governor of Michigan will be shutting things down in Northern Michigan shortly.
While beaches and the outdoors certainly offer opportunities to remain at safe distances and aren't likely to be major sources of airborne COVID transmission, there's all the visitation from higher prevalence places and ancillary activity in shops, restaurants, and hotels to worry about.
On a personal note, I'm working at a winery for the summer while looking for longer term work. Last week, we had a drunken college-age visitor walk in without a mask, wanting to taste wine. They were literally dripping wet from the beach, half-naked and barefoot.
The restaurant across the street has a health department alert after an out-of-state vacationer tested positive.
I just learned yesterday that one of the beachside local restaurants had a summer worker show up after testing positive for COVID; the restaurant is now shut for two weeks of staff quarantine.
It's not the outdoors that's a problem; it's all the human traffic associated with beach-going.
Yeah, makes sense. But it seems like there is a problem with the messaging not being nuanced enough, or the nuance getting removed. (Like early recommendations that most people shouldn't wear masks.) It seems important to talk about the base-level scientific understanding, however limited that is, and not just what you want people to do.
I guess it's fine to call out the noxious and unproductive behaviors around "shaming" in all spheres.
It's just not as effective as non-judgmental information, and creates dangerous levels of polarized pushback as people hunch into their defensive shells of habit, prejudice, ignorance, and spite.
Though The Atlantic essay has some well-crafted turns of phrase, it's mainly a hot-take on all the "beach-shaming" media stories. It's not an attempt to describe, quantify, diagnose, or remedy the practice of shaming itself. Neither does the essay describe what better communication about risks might look like. The below was what I felt was the best writing in the essay:
It's worth emphasizing how news stories tend to anthropomorphize the virus as if it's a personal nemesis with moral biases to afflict the sinful or hated groups, rather than an impersonal, natural phenomenon that we will eventually understand and be able to mitigate. Many countries other than the U.S. seem to have figured this out - maybe the execrable quality of English-language science and health journalism has something to do with this. ;-)
The basic argument in this article seems plausible to me, but it doesn't contain any reporting about what officials are thinking when they close beaches. There may be practical considerations not mentioned.