Read on Twitter
In the latest pod, @dmarusic & I talk about death, COVID, and how different cultures deal with culture and sickness. But, naturally, before that there's a rant. Enjoy: https://wisdomofcrowds.live/the-cultural-roots-of-coping-with-covid/
One major puzzle for me has been Egypt. Out of, say, 80 relatives, at least 8 have gotten COVID and at different times. There are a lot of doctors in the family, yet no one changed their behavior. None wore masks and they kept going to indoor weddings
Egypt seems like a success, and in some ways Egyptians have willfully fashioned their own reality. They have resolved to not care about COVID or to take a "we're probably gonna get it anyway, and what God wills God wills" approach.
There's also a Trump effect. My relatives know a lot of people who have gotten COVID and basically none have been hospitalized, so it makes COVID seem more manageable, like not a big deal. So: the more people experience COVID in a personal way, the *more* reckless they become
The death and hospitalization rate in Egypt *is* a lot lower than what one might expect. Two reasons are: nursing homes don't really exist conceptually, and there are a lot fewer people over 80, and in the US at least 50% of deaths are attributable to those two groups
No one wants to talk about Muslims or Arabs as if there's something "wrong" with them, but there's what one might call "inshallah fatalism," which is probably more about living under authoritarianism where individuals are powerless to change their fates than religion
It's either vaguely controversial or blindingly obvious and banal to say that culture matters. I mean, of course it does but we don't know how to talk about it. Attitudes toward death to vary widely from culture to culture. But obviously that's hard to measure in a systematic way
To put it differently: Culture matters. Always. It's only a question of how much it matters https://wisdomofcrowds.live/the-cultural-roots-of-coping-with-covid/
