The Great COVID Divide

“The war has changed.”

Those four words, culled from a Center for Disease Control memorandum that became public last week, warned us that COVID-19 is not nearly as under control as most of society had come to believe. The speed and strength of the Delta variant has shaken our confidence regarding the progress we have made in fighting the pandemic, and it has strongly reinforced the importance of vaccinations as greatly enhanced—though not absolutely fail-safe—protection against the spread of the virus.

We also learned last week that Jewish Americans are much more likely to get vaccinated against COVID-19 than the rest of the population. According to a recent study from the Public Religion Research Institute, 85 percent of Jews have either had the shot or are planning to do so, compared with just over 70 percent of all Americans. These results should not be particularly surprising. The demographic characteristics that are most frequently seen among resistors—lower levels of education, residents of rural and small town America, members of minority communities, young people and working class individuals—are not nearly as heavily represented among Jews as the overall population.

But this cultural disconnect means that the growing tensions between those who have been vaccinated and those who have not could be especially intense for many of us in the Jewish community who struggle to understand the motivation of the holdouts.

The emergence of the Delta variant, and the wide range of responses to the heightened calls for vaccines, masks and social distancing, makes it feel like we are on the precipice of a much larger and more dangerous divide in American society than we have experienced to date. The anger and the mutual disdain between those of us who have followed COVID guidelines and those who have not have surfaced fairly consistently over the course of the pandemic. But it appears as if that fury is about to explode in a potentially destructive way.

Because the data shows so clearly that mutant strains of the virus disproportionately impact those who have not been vaccinated, the resentment from those who have taken the shot toward those who have not is much more palpable. Unlike last year, we now have pharmaceutical protection available to us. But those who have resisted or rejected vaccination are now putting the rest of us at risk, and we are beginning to see increasingly frequent examples of that hostility playing out around the country.

This year is different. The people we know to be responsible for COVID’s resurgence are very apparent, and the temptation to lash out against them will only intensify.

When the shutdown came last spring, most of our venting had a convenient partisan outlet. Those who followed social distancing rules could condemn Donald Trump for his response to the virus; those who ignored mask mandates and other requirements blamed an assortment of mayors, governors and health department officials. But much of the vitriol seemed like an outgrowth of typical campaign bickering: the charges and insults fit neatly into the context of a presidential campaign. Even though the stakes—in terms of people’s jobs, homes and lives—were much higher than in most partisan political debates, the contours of the COVID argument largely mirrored that of the general election dialogue.

Except for those familiar political foes, it was also difficult to find a useful scapegoat for a once-in-a-century worldwide plague. Making China into a target was tempting, but Trump’s maladroit attacks on that country turned that resentment into a partisan issue as well. Those who criticized China for its nebulous role in identifying and confronting the virus risked being typecast as Trump supporters, which quickly discouraged half the country from any serious Sino-bashing. Blaming either nature or biology was equally unsatisfying, and so we were left with a seminal crisis but no villain to whom we could assign responsibility.

But this year is different. The people we know to be responsible for COVID’s resurgence are very apparent, and the temptation to lash out against them will only intensify. But screaming, yelling and threatening are rarely effective tools for persuasion. Those of us who have been vaccinated and are understandably frustrated by the holdouts are going to need to find a more encouraging and productive strategy for winning converts. If we give in to our angry instincts, the societal divide will grow even wider. It won’t be easy, but we need to find a way to communicate more effectively and compassionately. If we succumb to our rage, the virus wins.