I think I'm seeing the emergency of a brand new threat to social cohesion as the pandemic grows. It's a pretty bad one, too. A thread:

In an area that has seen a ton of COVID, there are two main camps: 1) YOLOers & 2) Distancers. These camps are increasingly at bitter odds.

The YOLOers are made up of two subgroups: 1) Ppl who've gotten over COVID & are now fine, and are out just living life again, and 2) ppl who still think it's a hoax or don't care.

Regardless of subgroup, YOLOers are losing patience with the Distancers for many reasons.

They blame the Distancers for the school closures, the ongoing job losses, the economic devastation, & the general misery & breakdown of society. If only the Distancers would man up & come out of their shells, we could all move on! So YOLOERS are MAD at the Distancers.

The Distancers, for their (our, really) part, are terrified of getting the virus (not so much b/c of fatality risk, which is low, but b/c we know ppl who've had nasty non-death outcomes). So they are still locking down & are not doing all the normal life things.

And the Distancers are sitting in lockdown, watching the YOLOers just YOLO their brains out, & are blaming the YOLOers for the fact that they still have to stay home. They're also bitter and jealous that they recovered cases get to just YOLO while they have to turtle in fear.

So this is evolving into a kind of really nasty blood feud now, between these two camps. They're each just totally over the other. They live separate physical lives in separate realities, & are increasingly not wanting to be in the same country with each other.

You know how different tribes in different geographies can come to hate each other? Or how a city block can separate one social reality from another?

Social distancing is inscribing a geographic separation onto our pre-existing ideological separation.

For instance, take two ppl from different ideological tribes who live in the same town & run in the same social circles (school, work, etc.) Now make them social distance -- you might as well have moved them into separate regions of the country. They're just as separated, now.

Yeah totally. There was a filter bubble-based division there already, and now it has this very geography-looking social-distancing-based divide layered on top of it that's reinforcing it. https://twitter.com/CathyReisenwitz/status/1291880552933421056

Yep. This is coming up for us in my house in our personal lives. It's something I'm really seeing close to home at the moment, b/c we're still Distancers. https://twitter.com/BeenNichole/status/1291879304062799872