In defense of COVID hygiene theater

Rituals are always important, but they are acutely so when other sources of authority have failed us. Early on in the pandemic, neither the Trump administration nor the CDC was capable of or interested in giving us straightforward protocols with clear and easy-to-understand rationales and explanations. There were a great deal of unknowns, and what was known was confusing, contradictory, constantly being revised, ignored, suppressed, or politicized. Left to our own devices, we had to create ad hoc protocols, which not only worked to keep us physically safe—they became rituals unto themselves, daily performances that proffered some measure of structure and security. I don’t miss the days of coming home and embarking on a decontamination routine like something out of 12 Monkeys, but I do recognize the way that such rituals at the time gave me a measure of control over my environment. And I do remember the way that the excessive routine—my clothes changed, my hands washed, my phone wiped down—gave me a feeling, afterward, of being, finally, safe.

Those annoyed by this behavior have begun to conflate institutional hygiene theater with personal decisions, seeing the latter as intrinsically political, the work of anti-Trump liberals whose showy performance was meant to shame red-staters through sanctimonious action. Reason magazine’s Robby Soave complained back in April that “many people—predominantly liberals—who claim to Follow the Science and Trust the Experts no matter what are nevertheless captivated by pandemic panic porn,” which for him included beliefs “that social distancing and masks should be mandatory even for the vaccinated.” Nor is this attitude found entirely on the right—Salon’s Amanda Marcotte recently argued that the “reality is that … some folks got caught up in the culture war drama of the mask and were happy to use them as a social signifier of their liberalness forever,” as though the only possible purpose for mask wearing is to “own the conservatives.” But this attitude—that the sole explanation for nonrational action is political—seems a rather blunt denial of the level of trauma so many of us across the political spectrum have undergone. Many rituals persist long after the initial danger passes, and become an extended process by which we remember and process trauma. (Just think of Passover, where the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt and flight to freedom is remembered each year in a ritualized meal.)