A common misperception is that public health protocols revolve around individuals, rather than the safety of communities. This misperception happens to align w/ the GOP's weighting of individuals>communities & is 1 among many reasons they feel so confident in rejecting PH advice

Of course communities are made up of individuals so obviously public health cares about individuals. And officials often want *every* person to be safe. But the protocols are about the community. The plans are about the community.

If a person gets sick w/ a contagious disease, the aim is not "OMG how can I cure this person & ensure they do not die?" it is "Did they spread the illness & how many others are infected? On a group level, what will be the strain on our system in terms of medical resources, etc?"

I encountered this myself when I had TB. I was legally mandated treatment. The gov't paid more than 40k to cure me & to investigate my infection. But I was so confused, at first, by how they didn't behave like normal doctors would. I felt very much like a data point. & I was.

I wanted to know more and more about my disease--how I got it & why. Public health was (although kind) utterly uninterested. They were all lovely, but it was never about *me*, it was about my effect on the community & curing me to mitigate/eliminate any further effects.

So it has been unsurprising to me to see Americans commonly misinterpret public health advice during this crisis. They seem to so often ask, "If I'm not 100% protected, why bother?" when it's never been about 100% protecting *you*.

Of course this confusion is perfectly aligned with conservatives' priors. Nothing can ever be about the public good for them. It must always be about the individual's benefit. Any evidence that something may not 100% benefit a given individual is evidence *against* that action