Nathan Schiller

Hygiene theater is not the—or even a—reason Covid-19 has hurt and killed so many Americans. The virus was novel and vicious, our government (like others) responded incompetently. Experts blundered, then battled their organizations’ mishaps. 

Yet even though hygiene theater may have had a negligible effect on disease prevention, it continuously wasted time and resources and, in the process, exposed the rotten pathology of American work culture. 

Hygiene theater is the American way: cheap and easy

As Covid-19 rampaged through the US in the spring of 2020, evidence showed that the virus was transmitted primarily through the air. To stop it, people needed to wear masks, socially distance, and stay outdoors. Indoor spaces needed good ventilation. 

Public health authorities did a terrible job of acknowledging and communicating this, but they faced resistance anyway. To Americans, masking, distancing, and outdoor activities are foreign, inconvenient, and best experienced in an air-conditioned personal vehicle. So we focused on the cheap and easy: cleaning. 

This response was somewhat sensible in the very beginning, when no one knew whether you could die by touching a door handle. Yet even though science quickly and ultimately debunked it, “deep cleaning” became a Covid-19 mitigation standard.

The American obsession with magical thinking

Why did this happen? Aside from the institutional failures, I think the underlying psychology involves the American obsession with work and freedom. (That that idea has one of the most horrific associations is, I imagine, lost on most of us.) We love to pretend we’re productive, strong (masculine), and in control (powerful). Threatened by disaster, we will not cover our faces and hide. We’ll scrub our way to freedom. 

Hygiene theater bundles our love of material production, stage production, and labor veneration. We are the leading nation in GDP (until China soon overtakes us), we have Hollywood (if you like superhero exports), and now we’ve got “essential workers” (cheap laborers recast by owners as divine heroes to weaken their leverage in the death fight for the flimsiest protections and benefits). And Covid-19’s got nothing on performative American work ethic. 

It’s an illusion, of course, as so much of America is. And while I hope the reality of more than a (counted) half-million (and counting) people dead will force a national reflection and reckoning, I know that’s probably the most magical thinking of all. God bless the United States of Amnesia.