杏吧原创

LIKE the majority of people in my local area, I follow the rules on face coverings. It鈥檚 an inconvenience, but I consider putting on a mask a small sacrifice to protect my health and that of other people. Every day, I see many people 鈥� more than could possibly have a legitimate exemption 鈥� flagrantly flouting the rules and it really gets up my nose.

The refuseniks annoy me on multiple levels. They are selfishly putting me and other people at risk. They think they know better than experts. They often fall for conspiracy theories. And even if they are mainly endangering themselves, I鈥檇 rather they didn鈥檛 end up wasting NHS resources. I鈥檓 tempted to confront them, but just mutter darkly under my mask.

Yet my biggest beef is that for some people, refusal to wear a mask has slotted neatly into a set of beliefs that I already found both baffling and unforgivably selfish. You know who I mean: the equality-hating, climate change-denying, PC-gone-mad brigade. I鈥檇 let them wallow in their own swamp, but their beliefs are barriers to social and environmental progress.

In the US, this new front in the culture war has escalated to shocking levels. Wearing a mask or not has become a high-vis badge of political affiliation. The issue even came up in the presidential debates and cleaves neatly along party lines, with Democrats much more accepting than Republicans of masks and other interventions such as social distancing.

Covid-19 has thus become yet another issue sucked into what political scientists call 鈥溾�� 鈥� the visceral and mutual hatred between supporters of the two opposing political parties. Both sides regard the other as selfish, hypocritical and closed-minded.

The chasm in the US has become so deep that both sides cannot even agree on basic facts about the world. You know, small stuff like whether climate change is real, whether covid-19 is a hoax, who won the presidential election.

This conjuring up of two alternative realities is both weird and infuriating. Political scientists have been trying to explain it since it became the dominant force in US politics around 20 years ago. The unanswerable question has always been about cause and effect: do political opinions drive polarisation, or do people pick sides first and then embrace opinions to match?

Then along came covid-19 and an opportunity to observe a brand-new issue as it polarised in real time. Political scientists watched the divide as it emerged and became entrenched.

鈥淥pinions are shaped not by rational deliberation, but by visceral hatred of the other tribe鈥�

The . Even though the end point is quite predictable, with Republicans skewing anti-science and Democrats pro, its origin isn鈥檛. It is driven not by positive commitment to an ideology, but by hatred and mistrust of their opponents (Nature Human Behaviour, ).

As soon as small differences emerge 鈥� with Democrats more likely to see public health as the priority and Republicans more concerned about personal freedom 鈥� both sides are driven by a ferocious desire to do the opposite of their opponents. From those tiny seeds of difference grow mighty oaks of partisan division. Neither side is 鈥渃hoosing鈥� science or anti-science. They are just being mindlessly tribal. This fits with suggesting that partisans in the US dislike the other side much more than they like their own, and are driven by a desire to crush their opponents.

This is a pretty miserable state of affairs: opinions on crucial issues are shaped not by rational deliberation, nor even by commitment to a coherent world view, but by visceral hatred of the other tribe. Under those conditions, what hope is there of ever bridging the divide?

But the latest research revealed a silver lining: in places where the virus is surging, those opposed to restrictions soften their hostility towards masks, social distancing and lockdowns. They move away from what political scientists call 鈥減olitically motivated reasoning鈥� towards 鈥渁ccuracy reasoning鈥�. In the face of existential threat, there is no choice but to accept reality.

There are signs that the . Even the most ardent denier finds it hard to maintain their denial in the face of extreme weather, wildfires or rising sea levels. Anti-vaxx sentiment is similarly bendable to reality. When covid-19 waxes, vaccine hesitancy wanes.

That is one reason why it is important to keep on framing the pandemic not just as a biomedical crisis, but as an environmental one too. As Adrian Martin, a professor of environment and development at the University of East Anglia in the UK, has pointed out, for people in the West, covid-19 is their first personal encounter with the biodiversity crisis. It is now a matter of self-interest to take that threat seriously. It鈥檚 a drastic way to win an argument, but if it works, I will take it.