Simon Erskine Locke, CEO, CommunicationsMatch™

It’s no coincidence that just as we start to see COVID-19 deaths decline and vaccination rates rise, that some states are dropping mask mandates and we are seeing rising criticism of efforts to reduce the pandemic’s spread.

That these actions fly in the face of the advice given by experts and the risk of vaccine-resistant mutations should not be a surprise if we take time to look at the arc of behavior during the pandemic. 

We started with former President Trump in January of 2020 playing down COVID-19 and stating that it would go away. We saw widespread resistance to mask wearing through the first half of the pandemic until the sheer magnitude of COVID deaths meant most of those who dismissed it as just a flu could do so no more. 

The noise quieted down as more and more families experienced someone close to them having a severe case of COVID-19 or died from it. 

The weight of the death toll of now more than 500,000 people helped keep the cork in the bottle of COVID’s dizzying deniers for a while, leading even the reluctant former president to begrudgingly wear a mask from time to time.  

As death tolls decline – it’s shocking that 1,500 deaths a day counts as dramatic improvement – and more Americans are vaccinated, the social weight of disavowal, repudiation and ostracism from the broader community has lightened and, no surprise, the cork is popping – with Texas and Mississippi leading the way.  

Far from learning the lessons of the pandemic – that individual responsibility around social distancing and wearing masks saves lives – a significant number of Americans will return to a path of resistance because in their political bubbles the risk to others and themselves is overridden by ideology. As President Biden stated on Thursday, this is Neanderthal behavior.

This is not unique to America, but it has reached its apogee here. The freedom we so value is also the freedom to deny science, believe in disproven conspiracies, and elect political leaders who reflect this. 

It’s important to recognize that in countries that have a culture of mask wearing, trust in experts, and where concern for others is as important as it is for individuals (think Japan), death tolls have been far lower than in the U.S. This is not an accident. But this reality will not matter when the genie is once more out of the bottle and more Americans go mask-less.       

There are deep behavioral and cultural underpinnings to what we are experiencing at this moment that, as communicators, we need to understand if we are to learn from it. 

One of the most important is the ongoing lesson of the resilience of deeply-ingrained behavior to facts – especially when there is no social pressure to moderate it and there are no competing ideas in their media consumption.   

Our failures to learn from the pandemic as well as the election, events of huge importance, may not simply be a history-repeating-itself moment, but also taps into the darkest traits of humanity. When leaders give voice to the outrageous and we retreat into bubbles, social mechanisms that would normally keep a lid on our worst excesses no longer come into play, providing permission for the extreme and outlandish to become normal.

Early in the pandemic I wrote an article, “Masks in the Time of Coronavirus: We Need to Overcome Mask Phobia.” This got a big response – good and bad. Once more, to wear or not to wear a mask will be a political proxy war and an indicator for whether or not we as a country and culture have learned anything. 

The lessons from the last year are profound and not always uplifting. Communicators are in the behavior business. What we do and draw from these experiences matter. As an industry we need to lead by example. Keeping our masks on for just a little while longer is the smallest thing we can do to make a difference. 

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About the Author: Simon Erskine Locke is CEO of communications agency and professional search and services platform, CommunicationsMatch™. He is a regular contributor to CommPRO.biz and vice president of the Foreign Press Association. Search for Agencies, Professionals & Service providers.  Create a profile on CommunicationsMatch.