Open the supplier seal for free
FT journalist Roula Khalaf selects his favorite story in this weekly newsletter.
In August 2021, a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic congress member, who set a face mask on the stairs of the US capital. You may be surprised to hear that then what was such a common view of the picture. “Of course!” The conservative media Breitbart tweeted with the video.
By that time, the face mask had become a strong political symbol, and there was no more than in America. On the left side of the mask, dressing meant that you were a sensible, communal liberal; Right that you were a virtue-signed, communist guest contract with a member of the Elite Elite.
Some companies like Kentucky did not give you to their premises if you had a mask; Others, in cities like New York, couldn’t get in if you weren’t. I remember that I was on the phone for a friend living on Brooklyn in the summer of 2021, who was killed that he had accidentally taken a few steps outside his apartment on a suppressingly hot day without his mask. It was not that he believed he might have the risk of spreading covid; It was that socially cannot be accepted not to constantly cover publicly.
Today, everything that has been rejected. The mask has been sent to the trash of non-dark political images. During the pandemic, I remember newspaper articles that suggest that using and other measures taken to stop the spread of viruses-to come to the cold and flu season now that we were used to them, but it has not happened.
In fact, on the contrary, it is now very rare to see anyone in London who uses the mask in public. My state of my state tells me that sometimes servers (who are often not given sick pay if they get sick) use them, but it is very unusual to see them differently. So, when politicized, it is to use the mask that even the liberals do not seem to want to use them if they are considered solely as a good signaling (a practice that itself is quickly outside fashion).
I’ve been thinking about this in recent weeks because I’m slowly recovering from the worst virus (including four times with Covid) I can remember. High fever for 72 hours; A week hardly get out of bed; Very permanent cough; Strange itchy post-virus rash. I’m not the only one: many of my healthy friends, colleagues and family members have imagined in recent months that they have started a particularly aggressive flu. There were so many critical events in the hospitals of the United Kingdom at the beginning of the year that they were talking about the “flu crisis”. Last month, health authorities said they were expecting this flu season to be “one of the worst” records.
Would it have been better if some people had decided to use a mask in public spaces? It is difficult to know – there is still disagreement about the effectiveness of masks. Based on what I have read and understood the respiratory viruses, I think they would probably have helped at least a little.
Your politics is likely to influence whether you, regardless of your effect, are likely to have a strong effect on vaccines, locking and all kinds of non-pandemic warfare warfare, regardless of your views, regardless of your views, and even God helps us guilty of the Ukrainian war.
And this is a problem in a culture of hyper-politicization: we lose our ability to see things at the nominal value, evaluate policies and ideas based on how useful they are. Instead, the concept of reality blurred which partisan lens we were looking for. Even presumably cold, hard financial information is skewed: there is now about five points of inflation between Democrats and Republicans.
So what can we learn from all of this? We must try to oppose the strong call to politicize everyone. If you list your beliefs to the Social Median Bio -Bio site as if they were some kind of advertisement that you are on the right side and that anyone who disagrees with the opposing beliefs.
We have to make a choice: either we prioritize the wealthy, in a healthy, stable society or prioritize tribalism; We can’t have both. If we continue to choose the latter, we will continue to lose the reality and continue Stuver.