This past summer, I discussed COVID-19 with two different kinds of people. The first wore a mask and stood no fewer than 10 feet away, warning me that “everyone is going to die by the end of the year.” The second told me they’d decided to stop wearing their mask to the grocery store since COVID-19 restrictions are “stupid.”
The divide between these two people has nothing to do with any belief (or lack thereof) in “COVID-19 science,” but stems instead from a fundamental clash of competing world-views. In fact, it’s the same liberal/conservative divide that occurs in virtually every other area of U.S. public policy. This is, in the words of Thomas Sowell, the debate over “whether, or to what extent, surrogate decision-makers can make better decisions than those directly transacting.”
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