As the coronavirus pandemic wends its way into a third year, its prominence in the public discourse shows little sign of abating.
Specialist reporters have been hired to debunk conspiracy theories, tech giants grapple with their responsibility to censor incorrect and harmful information and newspapers carry tragic stories of those who rejected the vaccine and later died of the disease. But increasingly absent from conversations about the virus is empathy.
It is not hard to understand why. You have done everything you were told, obeyed the rules, followed guidance, you got your vaccine and hopefully recently your booster also. Christmas last year was small, relatives left isolated. Holidays abroad have been rare, expensive and burdened with reams of bureaucracy. And yet hospitals are filling up, many beds occupied by the unvaccinated, and more restrictions loom. How could this possibly be fair?
Hospital Report
Echoing this disposition, former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday: “If you’re not vaccinated and you’re eligible, you’re not just irresponsible, you’re an idiot.”
This type of language is not an effective mode of marshaling support for vaccines from those already sceptical
This might well chime with the public mood, as our compassion wanes and frustration mounts. But what exactly, we might ask, is the point of such an intervention? A morality play about the human failing of not trusting the science and being swept up in a tidal wave of conspiracy? Or, in the face of another potential lockdown thanks to overwhelmed health services, an attempt to seek catharsis by blaming others and their Covid-19 folly?
There are two things we can be quite sure of: this type of language is not an effective mode of marshaling support for vaccines from those already sceptical; and calling people idiots in a bid to convince them of your rightness is a pretty doomed venture. Because, as Elizabeth Breunig notes in the Atlantic, “to persuade someone to do something, you have to present them with information that is persuasive to them, not strictly with information that’s persuasive to you.”
If these kinds of appeals to the unvaccinated haven’t been successful so far, there is hardly a magic reason that means they will suddenly – against all evidence – work now.
So we must return to the question, what is this intervention for? It seems a reflection of the nastier side of humanity that the pandemic has unleashed – an urge to shame, censure and sneer at those who do not behave and think as we do. And these impulses come from nowhere if not a dearth of empathy, finding their provenance in a refusal to think about why someone might occupy a world view at odds with your own.
We largely come to possess our beliefs thanks to a variety of inputs: our education, friends, jobs, friends’ jobs, where we live, how much we earn. In fact, socioeconomic circumstances are consistently considered the greatest indicators of our political leanings.
When thinking about how to talk to those who hold harmful views on the pandemic, maybe we should remember that we are a product of our surroundings, a lot of things are beyond our control, and that it is an immense privilege to believe in vaccines and to trust those selling them to us.
Our objective, then, should not be speaking down to those who are wary or sceptical or nervous. But instead we should be motivated by a desire – an empathetic impulse – to help people not suffer because of their views. The fact that conversations about the vaccine-hesitant seem so often geared towards chastising them for affecting our freedoms, rather than driven by a concern for their health and life, is certainly telling.
And away from vaccines, it is remarkable that this far into the pandemic some are still holding on to the idea that contracting the virus is the result of moral weakness. That the infected did not heed sufficient caution, that covid is a punishment for ethical transgressions instead of a highly contagious respiratory virus that gathers in the air like smoke waiting for anyone – good or bad – to breathe it in.
Young people blame the old for shutting down their lives in an attempt to prevent the spread of a virus that is unlikely to make them sick
It is all a byproduct of empathy burnout. And it is infecting every level of conversation. Old people blame the young for recklessly going to nightclubs. Young people blame the old for shutting down their lives in an attempt to prevent the spread of a virus that is unlikely to make them sick. The vaccinated speak callously about the unvaccinated. Entire nations are chastised for their policies and competition arises in the most crass way as we compare death rates and seek patriotic validation.
We might say that Covid-19 did not create this compulsion, rather it fed it and gave it space to grow. I think we need not be so hopeless. Maybe frustration at the state of the world has put strain on our capacity for empathy right at this minute. But we can, and should, believe this is not always an instinct waiting on the sidelines for a moment to pounce.
Perhaps now is the best time to prove that to ourselves. As Christmas approaches, and more difficulty lies ahead for everyone, rediscovering the comity we had in the early days of the pandemic would be an admirable pursuit. And remembering that we need to work with, not against, one another, a perfect holiday message.