Trust, individualism, and the logics of care in middle America during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Polarization and turf-wars have characterized the COVID-19 response in the United States. While COVID-19 narratives can be binary and divisive, how people cared for each other throughout the first year of the pandemic is more nuanced. This article describes how and why constructs of fear, individualism, wellbeing, and personal risk-taking became imbued in behaviors that thwarted the risk of the collective. This work is based on informal conversations, public forums, and 86 in-depth interviews during the 2020 summer in a small tourist town in northwest Iowa. Some believed engaging in public health prevention was not their responsibility and instead privileged their personal enjoyment, finances, or mental health over others, de-emphasizing personal risk and stating God will protect them. Others were deeply committed to public health prevention, by staying home, masking, and social distancing. In both cases, people used shame to promote their views (e.g., shame on you for masking/unmasking!) as well as fear (e.g., I do/don’t fear coronavirus because I am virtuous). However, most engaged in logics of care, navigating what public health precautions to follow to protect themselves and those they loved most. Yet, such decisions were navigated through a culture of individualism and ideals of personal responsibility that cultivated a mistrust in public health. Understanding how and why such individualism took hold in American publics is a crucial inflection point for policy-making as well as cultural interpretation of why and how people construct risk and responsibility.