How a “You do You” Culture Has Made Us Vulnerable to the Coronavirus

... how does a “You do you” culture handle something like the coronavirus?

Prior generations, no doubt, would’ve turned to science as the great solution. Armed with ever more impressive technological advancements, we were told our potential for solving the world’s problems was essentially limitless.

In the case of the coronavirus, however, the god of science does not seem so omnipotent after all. Maybe there will be a vaccine at some point in the future, but for now we are on our own.

So, what then can be done, at least on a human level, to stop the virus? Well, here’s where we come to a rich—and perhaps tragic— irony in the current situation: we can only stop the virus by doing what is best for others not just for ourselves. Read More

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Michael Kruger's article identifies what may be one contributing factor to the failure of a segment of the US population to take the spread of COVID-19 across the United States with the seriousness that it deserves. The findings of the recent polls reported in the NPR article point to another contributing factor. Other contributing factors include the fact that the United States has not had to deal with a health emergency on a national scale in recent years and the possibility of the occurrence of such an emergency and its consequences has become remote from our thinking.The old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” was a part of my upbringing but that adage appears to have been forgotten in this day and time. There is also the antivaxxer movement which reflect a tendency in American society to dismiss the seriousness of what have historically been life-threatening diseases and to distrust the medical community. In the case of a number of young people who have not outgrown their adolescence, there is that sense of invulnerability that all adolescents have. This is one of the reasons why that they make good soldiers. The findings of early studies of COVID-19 also suggested that the virus did not affect young people the same way as it did older people.These findings were widely-circulated on the internet, which is the main source of information for young people. But as the article about the Vanderbuilt students who tested positive for the virus points out, young people aren't the only people who don't take the virus' spread with the seriousness that it warrants. People in the older generations don't either. While may be easy for one generation to blame another, it is far more complicated than generational differences. Our culture is very individualistic. Americans are not as community-oriented as Europeans and Asians. We also must consider the fact that human beings are hard-wired to not contemplate their own deaths. It is, scientists tell us, a survival mechanism. Add to this picture the fact that human beings do not have the same degree of empathy toward each other. Some have more empathy than others. A range of factors account for the differences in empathy between individuals.