Am I the One Who's Wrong Here?

 

I didn't take a lot of psychology in school, but I took enough to know about a classic experiment from the 50s that tested conformity and how groups can be influenced, even by untruths.  If anyone wants to look them up on the Google machine, they are called the Asch Conformity Experiments.

In a nutshell, a group of students was asked to identify shapes and lines in pictures shown and/or drawn for them.  At first, all the students identified the pictures as shown.  Then all but one of the students would start lying about what they've seen. Three straight lines might be called a straight line and two curved lines.  The one student not in on it would be perplexed - am I not seeing what I think I see?  If everyone else sees it that way, shouldn't I see it that way too?  They would often conform to what the group is saying rather than what the experimented-on student THOUGHT they were initially seeing.  GROUP CONFORMITY CHANGED THEIR POINT OF VIEW.

So, am I the wrong who's wrong here?

We are in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, and the area I live in is acting more and more like it's OVER, DONE WITH, IN THE PAST!

Some things around here have remained pretty strict and cautious, such as the public library.  Others are very mixed.  Most stores around here have mask requirements, but the compliance rate varies from store to store.  Krogers hits between 50 to 70% compliance - it was slighter higher when Trump was diagnosed, and then dipped back down after Trump's 👉👉👉PATENTED MIRACLE CURE!👈👈👈

Waycross passed a mask ordinance that quickly became THE MOST IGNORED LAW IN THE HISTORY OF WAYCROSS.  Many stores slapped up signs that said, in essence, we're special, and we don't have to obey the law.  Milledgeville had the same type of ordinance in my son's college town, and their stores also had the same snotty, defiant signs that Waycross did.

Visually, there is very little to suggest that this area recognizes there is a crisis.  I've seen pictures from private schools in this area where virtually no one, student or staff, is wearing a mask.  Our local public school system has refused to make masks mandatory.

All of this was highlighted to me at a recent public event I attended, involving people performing without masks.  I wore a mask and sat way more than six feet away from anybody.  A guess at the number of people there was maybe between 40 and 50.  Of that group, I saw a total of three other masks.  Three.

So, am I wrong?  Is this thing over?  I really want to do theatre again, but have passed because of the risk involved.  But am I being silly?  How do I know when so many around me are acting like nothing is going on?  Am I the crazy paranoid one?  Are the three straight lines I see really one straight line and two squiggly ones?

Given everyone's behavior here, the numbers in Ware and Pierce are not accelerating as much I would expect.  So, maybe I am being silly.

But then I hear, anecdotally but from multiple sources, that one of the reasons numbers have not gone through the roof here is because getting tested has been discouraged. I have heard of doctor offices and clinics that have actively discouraged people with symptoms from being tested.  I have heard of a person being told, "Yeah, you got COVID, no need to bother with the test."  So, that case will not get recorded as a case because the numbers come from tested people.  A nurse gleefully told a recovering COVID case, "Just think!  Now you don't have to wear a mask!"  - as if we knew for a certainty about immunity and how long it lasts.

This is terrible if numbers are suppressed because places like my church are trying to make reasoned decisions about re-opening and what cautions to take. 

Suppressing numbers puts us all at risk.  It does help with the little Asch Conformity Experiment conducted in my home/work counties.  It makes even me question what is really going on.

But, then, as any reader of this blog already knows, I hear the beat of a different drummer, and it is harder to make me believe I am seeing what I'm not seeing more than most.  I'm not bragging.  We all have our skills and talents.  I've just always been more resistant to conformity than most, and I have a built-in ConMan detector, honed by years of both professional and educational experience.

So, am I the one that's wrong here?

No. No, I'm not.  Sorry, Ware/Pierce.  I do not buy into your by-default herd immunity experiment.  I will do everything I can to fight it, no matter how isolated and non-conforming I look.

Deal.