Captivity, Conformity, and Liberation

 David Bishai, MD, MPH, PhD

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. Psalm 137:1.

Pity the eternal frustration of priests--knowing what people ought to do and never being able to get them all to do it. The priest's playbook ties promises of heaven and hell to scriptural conformity.  "Repent or be damned!" echoes from pulpits and tabernacles.   Tales of Babylon and brimstone hailing down at any hint of idol worship still quicken the blood of would-be sinners.  Maybe before the printing press and the enlightenment olden-day priests came close to wiping out sin, but I doubt it.  

Other social species are wired for conformity, but in humans the neural circuits for assent run through the frontal lobe. For 1000 people to do the same thing, 1000 brains have to deliberate.  For 990 out of 1000 conforming is the easy way.  Doing what others do can save time and effort.   Independent thought is tiresome and costly.   But  thankfully independent thought has not been extinguished. Society would be lost without a challenge to group think.  If every generation did exactly as it was told there would be no tools except stone tools.  Mavericks in the herd are a hedge against priestly error and the engine of all human progress.

Group-think threatened progress in the fight against COVID-19.  The party line that face masks were not necessary needed to be challenged.  The reflex to close all elementary schools all the time everywhere needed nuance.  Where would we be without gadflies?  And yet, non-conformity might be our nemesis this year.

America's three waves of COVID-19 are an object lesson that any fire and brimstone preacher would love.   The COVID-19 graph plots out the visitations of the viral tormentor on states and counties that gave in to their temptations.  The March, May, and October of 2020 waves in the COVID-19 roller coaster are warnings that governors, mayors, and local health departments should have listened to the orthodoxy. Frail humans should have checked their base impulses to gather and hug and make merry.  As the country's COVID-19 curve enters another valley who will you bet on? 

One reason to hope for a different outcome this spring is the theory that the population of those in the path of COVID-19 either through choice or obligation was relatively finite and this group has been infected into a state of semi-immunity.  Then if we can just hold infection rates at bay till summer the vaccination coverage will rise high enough to stem the rising tide.  

On the other hand,  with schools reopening,  parents seeing their kids back in school will be triggered to resume all of their 2019 lifestyles.    Stalwarts who have kept their faith in masks and social distancing might see peers making merry and give in to worldliness  before they get vaccinated.  Non-conformity to COVID-19 measures will become far more alluring in the spring.  But this time the traditional role of non-conformity to liberate and set the human race free could darken to become the engine of our captivity.    

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