Joe Average

The American whose mind we need to change is the person who didn’t mind the pandemic response

Illinois resident Matt Brown, @statomattic, wrote a prescient thread yesterday about how the average American is thinking about the pandemic response. He profiles a pervasive perspective that needs to change if we want officials to be held accountable, their damage repaired, & their policies banished.

Posted with permission, edited slightly from the original.

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We spend most of our time [on covid Twitter] arguing about the extremes. But for a few minutes, let's step into the shoes of Joe Average.

Joe Average is, well, average. He uses Twitter mostly to check on his fantasy football team. He may vote D or R, but he doesn't hang on every news cycle. He may be a he or a she. It doesn't much matter. He floats with the mainstream and doesn't question much. It's good to be Joe.

In other words, Joe is most everyday people. He wasn't happy about locking down in 2020, but what he heard on the news convinced him it was necessary so he did it. Same with masks. The experts on TV all said it was important, so being a good citizen, he did.

In spring 2021, Joe got vaccinated. Again, it was the right thing to do. Somewhere between then and early 2022, Joe got covid. It wasn't fun but he got better in a week or so. He assumed this was thanks to his vaccine. Unprovable, but again, he followed the rules and... all good.

By now, Joe has spent several months back to mostly normal. No more masks, kids are back in school, life is pretty good again! Aside from the economy, but whatever, that's cyclical.

Joe hears Leana Wen and others say we're in a different place now, so we no longer need mandates, and Joe nods. This sounds right. It makes him feel smart. He did do the right thing, and now we are done.

Joe Average is falling prey to a form of Resulting Fallacy. Things are relatively normal now because we did all the right things when we had to do them. Joe thinks we followed the playbook for a pandemic because that's what the "experts" tell him on TV, but that's false.

Lockdowns were never part of the mainstream pandemic plan pre-2020. Masks were known to NOT work. The truth is, we didn't follow the playbook. We chucked it.

The fact that things are better now has NOTHING to do with lockdowns and NOTHING to do with masks. It has everything to do with a combination of acquired immunity in the population and shifting politics. Joe Average doesn't know this because he doesn't pay that close attention.

To Joe Average, we did our jobs and came out the other side. It was messy, but it mostly worked in an "unprecedented time." Joe has no desire to mask up again, which is a good thing. Bad news is, Joe is ripe to be manipulated again in the future.

THAT is our current problem, and our job: To convince the Joe and Jo Averages out there that our response wasn't the solution, but rather it created new problems. Joe needs to be convinced this cannot happen again for another reason.

And this...this, above all, is why there must be a reckoning in the court of public opinion for the officials and "experts" and media outlets who promoted the false narrative all along. The solutions they proposed were never mainstream or sensible. They were extreme and wacky.

We must continue to make the argument, even today when the winds are in our favor.

We must make sure we learn the right lessons, so the same mistakes are not made next time, and so the public - the Joe Averages - are less credulous and more curious.