ITHACA, New York: As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, our understanding of it is improving.
Through a combination of epidemiology and physics – including knowledge of the viruss character and how aerosols float in the air – we are learning more about how the microbe infects new hosts.
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This understanding is fueling hopes that we will soon be able to counter the pandemic more effectively. But it has also led to some contentious exchanges regarding the social sciences and the interaction between social norms and the law.
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AN ACRIMONIOUS DEBATE
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Ever since the pandemic began to spread beyond Wuhan and around the world, there has been an increasingly acrimonious debate regarding which preventive measures should be decreed by government and enforced by public officials and the police, and which should be promoted as social norms.
Unfortunately, this debate has become so polarised in some countries that people are immediately classified as right-wing or left-wing depending on their view. Because people often do not like to be categorised in this way, and certainly not wrongly, many are reluctant to express themselves on this important question.
In fact, on many coronavirus-related matters, we need enforceable laws. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, when people understood little about the virus, treating public-health measures as matters of personal choice was folly.
Because some people decided to gather in large groups and not wear face masks, the disease became widespread in some countries, with Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro and the United States under President Donald Trump being prime examples.
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But it would be equally dangerous to swing to the other extreme and make governments solely responsible for changing our behaviour.
BRING BACK SOCIAL NORMS
Social norms are often more effective than government mandates, because they allow a degree of flexibility that statutes cannot provide.
In Ithaca, for example, there is a bridge on Forest Home Drive that has featured in studies of games and social norms, including in William Fergusons book Collective Action and Exchange. The bridge is so narrow that cars can pass only in one direction.
Regulating the traffic flow by law might entail making it a one-way bridge, or requiring cars to travel from left to right in the morning and right to left in the evening. Or the law might require drivers to alternate, with one crossing from left to right and the next in the opposite direction, resulting in wasted space behind each car.
People line up at a food bank following the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, US, Jul 30, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri)
What happens in the absence of legal regulation is far better. There is a norm whereby three or four cars cross in one direction, and then the drivers behind them stop, allowing three or four cars to come from the other side.
Because the norm, unlike a law, is flexible, you might, if you are in a hurry, decide to cross the bridge as the fifth or sixth car, delaying those waiting on the other side by a few seconds.
ARTICULATE THE RATIONALE
As we understand more about COVID-19 and how the virus spreads, we can decide when we should socially distance ourselves, and by how much. The six-foot (1.8m) rule may need to be interpreted flexibly.
For example, if you are talking to a much taller person, or someone who holds their chin very high, you may need to move back an extra foot in order to allow any infected aerosol to complete its arcing journey from face to floor.
What we need are guidelines with an articulated rationale, so that people can adjust their behaviour to the context.
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In a widely cited recent paper, for example, the University of California, San Franciscos Monica Gandhi and her co-authors show that face masks not only protect others from your COVID-19 germs, should you be carrying them, but aRead More – Source
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