Coronavirus panic will divide people

The argument

There is a long and well-established history of disease outbreaks leading to deeper cultural and social divisions, and the mechanism is reasonably well understood. The fear and anxiety of facing a dangerous contagion can prompt negative feelings that are irrationally directed at others, entrenching personal prejudices and raising the intensity of ongoing disputes. A threat that cannot be seen or reliably located invites people to locate it in a group instead, which converts an epidemiological problem into a social one. Simply because the coronavirus originated in China, and even before a large number of cases had occurred in the United States, racially motivated attacks on ethnically Chinese and Asian residents of the U.S. increased in frequency following the outbreak. That the attacks preceded the caseload is the telling detail: what was driving them was association rather than exposure. The second effect works by subtraction rather than by provocation. Under normal circumstances, public events such as celebrations and athletic contests can serve as opportunities for diverse people to come together and set aside their differences in common appreciation of their shared interests. These occasions are among the few reliable settings in which people who share little else stand alongside one another, and they do their work simply by taking place. Disease outbreaks limit these opportunities by mandating the cancellation of large public gatherings. By February 2020, the coronavirus outbreak had already caused numerous major events to be cancelled, including the 2020 Tokyo Marathon. So the two effects compound: suspicion is being generated at the same moment that the occasions which normally counteract it are being removed, leaving the divisions to harden with nothing set against them.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The evidence supports division; the position requires irreparability, and nothing here addresses the difference. Waves of hostility during epidemics are well documented and so is their recession: the social divisions of previous outbreaks did not prove permanent, and the cancelled events the argument cites are the clearest case of a temporary effect, since marathons, festivals and stadium crowds resumed. Naming a suspended sporting fixture as evidence of irreparable harm illustrates the gap between what is shown and what is claimed. The argument also weighs only one side of the social response. The same period produced a documented surge in mutual aid groups, volunteering, neighbour networks, and public expressions of solidarity with health workers — a pattern researchers of disasters describe as common, in which crisis generates cooperation as well as suspicion. An argument predicting net division has to weigh those against each other, and this one does not mention them. The racist attacks on Chinese and other Asian residents are real, serious and well recorded, and they are the strongest thing in the argument. But they evidence a wave of racist violence directed at particular communities rather than a general division of people from one another, and the framing of 'panic dividing people' understates what happened by treating targeted racism as a symmetric social effect. There is also a sequencing problem. The entry writes from February 2020 and predicts from a few weeks of evidence, at a point before the pandemic's principal social effects had occurred. The strongest case for irreparable harm lies elsewhere — in the deaths themselves, in bereavement, in interrupted education and long-term illness — and none of it depends on whether panic proved divisive.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Epidemic-driven hostility is well documented and so is its recession, and the racist attacks cited — real and serious — evidence a wave of violence directed at particular communities rather than a general division of people from one another; the same period also produced a documented surge in mutual aid, volunteering and public solidarity, which the premise does not weigh. [Rejecting P2] Cancelled gatherings are the clearest case of a temporary effect, since marathons, festivals and crowds resumed, so a suspended sporting fixture cannot support a claim of irreparability. [Rejecting C] The conclusion requires harm that cannot be repaired while the premises establish division during the outbreak, and the entry predicts from a few weeks of evidence in early 2020, before the pandemic's principal social effects had occurred — the stronger case for irreparable harm lying in the deaths, bereavement, interrupted education and long-term illness, none of which turn on whether panic proved divisive.