How Culture Shaped the Pandemic Response
My interests in both data and exploring different cultures have left me frequently researching various country’s COVID-19 statistics and response. With a more relaxed course schedule and some newly learned data analysis tools, I decided to play around with some different values to see if anything interesting arose. Rather than looking at government stringency or mask-wearing compliance across different countries, I assessed cultural components. After creating a few useless graphs, there was one correlation that looked promising: COVID-19 deaths per million and a nation’s individualism distance index (IDV).
The IDV is defined by Geert Hofstede as “a preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of only themselves and their immediate families.” This measure has the USA, UK, Netherlands, and Belgium at the top with Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan at the bottom. The IDV was a statistically significant predictor of COVID-19 deaths per million, explaining 32% of the variation between 61 countries. When removing the outliers of New Zealand and Australia, that value rose to 45%.
I believe this best explains why COVID-19 has been so rampant in the US, expressing similar trends in almost all states. We struggle to contain a contagious virus because our culture has not taught us to think hard about how our actions influence our community. When we think about examples throughout our lives, it starts to make a bit more sense. Growing up, the primary reason for staying home from school was because we didn’t feel up to going, not so we didn’t spread the sickness to others. Think of the people you know who have voted in elections primarily with the goal of not increasing taxes on themselves, with little consideration for their community. Shift the focus to today, and it makes more sense why people often share remarks such as “I’m not going to live in fear when I know I’ll be fine if I catch covid”, or behaviors like packing bars and the weekend darty despite being critical of the government’s COVID-19 response on social media.
I’m not being entirely critical of individualistic cultures, nor am I advocating for 180-degree cultural shift. Individualism provides many benefits, such as making mental illness a less stigmatized topic, and normalizing individual expression. This considered, I do think this pandemic has shined a light on some of the darker areas of the individualistic self. Strengthening the bonds to our communities and increasing empathy to understand the impacts of our behavior should become pillars of American culture without losing the benefits of individualism.
When COVID-19 is in the rearview and merely a point of reflection, I hope that American institutions of all forms: the family, churches, schools, the government… all take the opportunity to think about what lead to over 500,000 deaths in this country and recognize a heightened concern for others and consistent selfless action as a path forward.
