FEBRUARY 19, SATURDAY

UNMASKED IN ASHEVILLE

When I went into Asheville a day ago with Todd and Susie it was windy but warm in the sun. We had lunch outside in the sun at a new Cuban restaurant called Little Chango. The food was delicious. Then we walked to the Black Mountain College Museum and then back to the Asheville South Slope, where trendy restaurants and condominiums are rapidly replacing stores selling motor parts and hospital supplies and car repair shops. Parking cost us $4 on the South Slope, which has never happened in Asheville and makes it a hard place to run an ordinary business. Customer parking is free at the strip along Patton Avenue.

I hadn’t realized it but this is President’s Day weekend. In 1968 government holidays started to be moved to Mondays. Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthrdays were close together and became joined in President’s Day. Other national holidays were moved to Mondays, such as Martin Luther King day and Columbus Day. So while nothing special is being honored on President’s day is is a time when shoppers are lured in by President’s Day specials and when tourist towns like Asheville boom because of the three day weekend. The hotels, on every corner, are all full. It took me a while to realize why the cars were bumper to bumper in Asheville and why the streets were jammed with tourists.

But I did notice something else. When we went to Best Buy, a big box electronics store, to look at a replacement for Todd and Susie’s seven year old stuttering computer, everyone was masked because of Covid. At Green Man Brewery where we had a beer in the sun before driving home, no one was masked. Of course, it is hard to wear a mask and drink beer, but something else was going on. We sat outside but inside where people had to shout to be heard even when sitting squeezed together the risk of being infected was extremely high and no one cared. What was clear was that local people shopping at Best Buy were protecting themselves and out of town people, often from states that have not required masks had decided the pandemic was over, were partying without caring. And this all happened within a couple of weeks. Two weeks ago all of Asheville required masks and everyone was being careful, now the lid was off and people, at least the out of towers, didn’t care.

It wasn’t that we are so much more safe now than we were two weeks ago. Omnicron is still everywhere. Today the Queen, though obviously not in Asheville, but certainly being careful, was infected.

So what has changed? Why the sudden flip-flop? It isn’t the health care professionals who are urging us to unmask. It must be politics and tribal behavior.

If you are a liberal, up until two weeks ago you were demonizing the anti vaxxers for furthering the pandemic and endangering others. And the anti vaxxers were starting to get restless and were blocking the bridges to Canada with trucks and threatening mayhem everywhere.

Now, suddenly, when omnicron is still as prevalent as ever we have flipped. In Asheville, a tourist town, there is tremendous business pressure to open up. But there is also some kind of tribal herd conformity going on. In a way, before this transition there was progressive political conformity in one tribe, and MAGA political conformity in the opposite tribe. Neither side could understand the other and maybe this is because there was little to understand, both were driven by group conformity.

But now the wind is out of the sails of both sides. Now, almost overnight, everyone has forgotten their principles and are all conforming to some new tribal spirit, one of letting go and returning to normal.

Up until two weeks ago we were told that the hospitals were being overrun with dying Covid patients and we were protecting the hospitals by wearing masks and social distancing and not going to bars. But the hospitals in Asheville never got close to crowding out other patients from the ICU. And we never asked if maybe the hospitals didn’t have enough ICU space not because of Covid but because of cost cutting. Covid might not have been the problem. I’m not trying to argue either way, but I do feel that our different political tribes are being swayed by tribal feelings.

And now, when everyone suddenly flips to taking off their masks, it could be just as much tribal pressure as rationality that makes us do it. Older people are still most threatened. I didn’t suddenly get any younger, and immunocompromised people are still immunocomprised. In fact, these groups now feel more threatened, rather than less, as everyone starts to bathe in each other’s breath again. But the train has left the station and to keep from looking like fuddyduddies we strip off our masks and climb aboard.

Another thought also keeps bothering me. People are still dying of Covid and many people in the world are not vaccinated. But we keep killing ourselves with automobiles and with guns but don’t get that worked up about it. The Russians are threatening to invade Ukraine and kill a lot of people. We wait with anticipation, everyone secretly loves a good war, until we see the suffering it causes. The point that I am wondering about, but not stating very effectively, is that what we get upset about, even life threatening human behavior is determined as much by tribal herd emotions as by rational understanding. And I think this week’s shucking of masks, or wearing of masks, reveals this, at least to me.