If you’re tempted to believe the country has “put COVID conflict behind us,” you should just spend a few minutes on Twitter. However distorted a barometer social media can be, it still tells us something.
When the Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was on the Joe Rogan podcast earlier this summer, vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez pushed back forcefully, saying that Spotify had “stopped even sort of trying” to stem the flow of misinformation.
When Rogan encouraged Hotez to debate Kennedy, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and others weighed in.
What’s most illuminating is to read the public comments on the various Twitter posts, which include vicious name calling (“liar ... coward ... corrupt tool of Pharma”) and strident accusations from both sides about the other causing more death.
The anger and animosity is still palpable even as most people speak of the pandemic in past tense.
There are good reasons for this. For most Americans, COVID-19 was traumatic in multiple ways — lost lives, lost businesses, strained relationships, closed schools and interrupted child development. There’s a reason life and death matters are so difficult to discuss. And the long-lasting effects of the pandemic aren’t limited to long COVID.
One of my dear friends who teaches at a major university describes being ostracized by friends as soon as they learned he held a differing view of the pandemic. The experience was so hurtful it’s still hard for him to talk about it today.
I’ve also been interviewing people about how the pandemic impacted their faith. While some grew deeper spiritual ties and attachments to their faith community, others have experienced estrangement with their former family of faith over some of the various heated policy disagreements.
This might be why every time I sat down to write something during the pandemic, I felt drawn toward the urgent need for more peacemaking and dialogue. As I see it, there are steps that we can take that could make an especially significant difference in how we go forward from here.
1. Trust people’s sincerity. Deep disagreements are hard enough to navigate in the best of conditions. But when we assume those on the other side of an issue are motivated by malevolent and corrupt interests, conversation quickly becomes impossible.
As best you can, consider that people you know reached different conclusions on the pandemic — masks, lockdowns, vaccines — from a place of sincere conviction. Instead of hiding secret agendas, they probably believe what they say and honestly think their choices represent the best option.
That’s important to grasp because the alternatives so quickly push us to dark places. Saying “You just want people to get sick and die” creates a very different emotional atmosphere than “You have a different view of what it is that helps people stay healthy.”
2. Appreciate the long history of health disagreements. Human beings have disagreed about health and healing as long as they’ve been on the planet.
For example, we’ve had long-standing differences in perspective about how extensive the interventions need to be for a diseased body to heal, along with the degree to which human beings have an innate capacity to heal.
That’s easy to forget with all the rhetoric about there being only one right way to approach infectious disease, mental health or any of the various ailments afflicting humanity. Advocates across various schools of thoughts in medicine and public health can speak with equal forcefulness and passion — and rightfully so. They all care a great deal about helping as many people as they can.
Let’s work to hear out different perspectives, while presuming that everyone is wanting to make a difference for good. And with the possibility of future pandemics ahead, let’s not forget that it really is possible to disagree about vaccines, masks and novel viruses without condemning each other.
3. Trust people’s thoughtfulness. All this being said, when life and death (and health) are on the line, it’s remarkably easy for any of us to reach harsh conclusions about people who see things differently. (“They might be sincere, but they’re clearly idiots!”)
Again, work to push back against this tendency. Try assuming the best about people, rather than being quick to presume ignorance, dishonesty or selfishness.
Don’t allow such suspicion to so quickly poison the well of civic conversation. And see what it feels like to instead work from the presumption that others in the conversation have reached conclusions in good faith.
4. Approach the scientific debate with more humility. It’s common to see folks on both sides of scientific questions act like all the evidence is on their side. In all likelihood, it’s not.
On almost every question that matters, there are robust debates going on between researchers that advance different arguments and interpretations about the data.
That’s just how science works. Admittedly, this conflicts with the public fantasy of science as some kind of oracle revealing truth with a capital T. But ask any researcher, and they’ll confirm this lines up with the messy nature of scholarly inquiry.
Try to “hold questions humbly” when you don’t understand why another person or leader or institution takes a certain position. As I’ve witnessed with my own neighbors, that makes all the difference in the world for being able to live together well and find peaceful solutions to disagreement.
5. Acknowledge people’s fears, even if you don’t share them. One of the turning points in my dialogue with climate activist friends was being able to acknowledge their apocalyptic fears about climate change, even if I didn’t share them. I care about these people, after all, so why wouldn’t I care about what is weighing them down?
In a similar way, we don’t need to agree with everything someone believes in order to empathize with them and show compassion.
In a day when more and more people are gleefully dancing on the graves of their socio-political opposites, we should push back forcefully and insist on a better way. Sickness and death, as difficult as they are, are universal experiences, and grief and sorrow can unite us, as can our worries. Listen to people’s fears. You can do that, even if you don’t agree on all the reasoning behind them.
No doubt, much of this can feel challenging. But it’s worth the work to see relationships healed, and if humility and respect can do so much for estranged individuals, imagine what this approach can do for our country.
Jacob Hess is the former editor of Public Square Magazine and writes at Publish Peace on Substack. He has worked to promote liberal-conservative understanding since the publication of “You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong)” with Phil Neisser. With Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson and Ty Mansfield, he also authored “The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints.”