COVID’s return is a human cooperation problem. Plus some politics.

The enemy in the war on COVID has mutated. The new Delta variant accounts for 82% of new cases, carries a viral load 1260 times the original virus, and is 137% more likely to cause death. Delta can be transmitted by the fully-vaccinated and non-vaccinated alike. Delta is spreading everywhere. Kentucky’s positivity rate has risen to nearly 9% as of July 30.

Vaccination is not a silver bullet, but it helps. According to a study in Israel, vaccines are only 39% effective in preventing contraction of Delta, but 90% effective preventing serious illness from it. Israel, which is 62% fully-vaccinated, is beginning to administer a third or booster shot to older citizens. (America likely will follow suit soon). France, Greece and Italy require vaccine passports to go to restaurants, gyms, movie theaters and other gathering places. Britain will do the same beginning in September.

Most countries have mask mandates in some form. Israel, for example, has reimposed mask mandates for indoor public gatherings because of Delta. A review of clinical studies on the subject published by the NIH finds a preponderance of evidence proves masks reduce transmission from unknowingly infected persons. Since Delta is transmissible by vaccinated and non-vaccinated alike, CDC no longer distinguishes between the two regarding mask-wearing.

Reasonable people would get vaccinated and wear masks. But for a segment of the Republican party, cooperating to fight COVID is a symbolic submission to the enemy – liberals. Most Democrats favor vaccinations and masking for kids in school. Republicans are knocking themselves out to pass laws banning masking and vaccine passports.

The anti-vaxx/anti-mask folks claim to be defending free choice, but totally disregard that their choice harms others. They draw upon fiction circulated by Russian-bot propaganda, right-wing echo chambers, and anti-vax proponents to justify their views, but the justifications are window dressing for what is essentially a passion that has nothing to do with science. A Tennessee pastor told his congregation Delta is a hoax and threatened to kick them out of the church if they wear masks or engage in social distancing. In Missouri and other states, health clinics report some patients visit in disguise and enter through secret side entrances because they fear retribution from peers for getting vaccinated. Most anti-vaxx/anti-maskers don’t act out this way, but for many of them reflect similar feeling in their social media posts, as well as a shared anger on other issues like BLM, LGBTQ, Hillary Clinton, etcetera. How that’s all connected psychologically is beyond the scope of this editorial, but the correlation can’t be just a coincidence.

Overwhelmingly, persons who say they will not get vaccinated are white and Republican.

Resistance to the fight against COVID, for them, is a proxy venue for a cultural war in which they are invested emotionally. Case counts, more deaths, overwhelmed hospitals won’t change that. As Trump and Fox News have demonstrated, reality is what you insist it is and facts to the contrary can be denied, suppressed or ignored. NPR reported on July 21 that twenty percent of new Delta cases were in Florida alone, yet Republican-controlled Florida refuses to issue daily reports on COVID numbers and has stopped releasing real-time hospital census information.

Lifting restrictions on masking and social distancing while large numbers of people remain unvaccinated creates a petri dish in which new variants like Delta will continue to evolve. Given that large numbers of people won’t get vaccinated, COVID may never end. We’ll go back and forth between shutting down and opening up, masking and not masking, and fight about all of it. COVID isn’t just a medical problem; it’s a human cooperation problem.

Mike Wilson is a lawyer, professor, and author of Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, political poetry for a post-truth world.