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As the number of Covid-19 cases starts to rise again in many states, the question is whether residents of those states will tolerate another lockdown. I used to think so, but it is increasingly clear that Americans have become comfortable with a remarkably high number of casualties.
There is a mechanism of social conformity at work here. Most people will not tolerate a small risk to their lives to dine out, for instance — but they might if all their friends are doing the same. The appeal of a restaurant isn’t just the food, it’s the shared experience and the sense that others are doing it, too.
The danger lies in the potential for ratchet effects. If hardly anyone is eating out, you might be able to endure the deprivation. But once others have started doing something, you will probably feel compelled to join them, even at greater risk to your life.
Consider that in the 1920s, the chance of catching a disease or infection from dining out was pretty high, but people still went out.
Accepting that level of risk was simply considered to be part of life, because everyone saw that everyone else was doing it. In similar fashion, members of an infantry brigade are usually willing to charge an enemy position so long as they can be assured that all their comrades are, too.
So if you are wondering why the US has become so tolerant of Covid-19 risk, one reason is simply that it has the most pro-consumption norms of any major Western nation. The pursuit of socially influenced high consumption levels is far more common in America than in, say, Kosovo, a country with a relatively good anti-Covid safety record.
It is worth asking who loses from these norms and associated higher risks. It is not higher-income teleworkers, who can themselves practice whatever degree of isolation they would want policy to impose. It is front-line workers, who tend to be poorer and are more likely to be black, Latino or immigrants. A country with a wide diversity of opinions and perspectives is more likely to accept those risks, and that too is the US.
I don’t mean to excuse the numerous Covid-related policy failures of government.
—Bloomberg