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Welcome to The Interpreter newsletter, by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, who write a column by the same name. |
On our minds: Trust in the time of coronavirus. |
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Trust and Trustability |
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No one is in the market for another reason to worry about the spread of the coronavirus. But as infections increase, the virus also threatens to contribute to another public crisis, one that could prove as dangerous as the virus itself: the global crisis of public trust in institutions. |
We can hear some of you rolling your eyes from here. But while trust may sound like a snowflake-y abstraction when compared with the very concrete dangers of a global pandemic, it is, in fact, one of the most important components of any functioning democratic system. And one of the functions of a democratic government is, of course, to respond to public health crises. |
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“When citizens don’t trust the electoral process, they often lose faith in democracy itself,” the Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in their 2018 book, “How Democracies Die.” “Without credible information about what elected leaders do, we cannot exercise our right to vote,” they write. “When citizens do not believe their elected leaders, the foundations of representative democracy weaken.” |
At a time of crisis over a potential pandemic, trust is especially vital. Without trust in experts, doctors cannot marshal an effective public health response. Without trust in the news media, it is difficult to persuade the public to take part in disease control measures. And without trust in government, panic can easily take hold. |
Unfortunately, public trust in institutions has been plummeting worldwide. The 2020 report from the Edelman Trust Barometer, a long-running global survey of public trust in government, the news media, business and nongovernmental organizations, found that “despite a strong global economy and near full employment,” global trust was at critically low levels usually only seen during major recessions. (In the United States, less than a third of the respondents said that they trusted the government, and less than half trusted the media.) |
The global response to the coronavirus threatens to undermine public trust even further. Doubts over whether the Chinese government has been fully transparent about the origins and the extent of infections in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, have hampered efforts to track the virus and determine how deadly it is. The epidemiological disaster on the Diamond Princess cruise ship revealed catastrophic weaknesses in Japan’s public health system. And countries that do not yet have major outbreaks have nevertheless stumbled in responding to limited infections among their own citizens. |
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The United States, for instance, left busloads of Americans, some of whom were infected with the coronavirus, waiting for hours on an airport tarmac while officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services debated what to do with the infected passengers. All were ultimately flown back to the United States, with those who tested positive for the coronavirus separated from the rest only by a hastily taped-together barrier of plastic sheeting during the flight. |
And since then, federal officials have given contradictory messages about the seriousness of the threat. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on Tuesday that it was no longer a question of if coronavirus infections would become widespread in the United States, “but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.” |
The following day, however, President Trump said in a news conference that “the risk to the American people remains very low.” |
Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio pundit, implied in his broadcast on Wednesday that Dr. Messonnier had exaggerated the threat in order to undermine Mr. Trump. Dr. Messonnier, Mr. Limbaugh pointed out, is the sister of Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel in the Russia investigation, making him a hated figure for many of Mr. Trump’s supporters. |
Such exchanges could easily spread distrust of the government’s response to the virus. Supporters of Mr. Trump may think that the C.D.C. is untrustworthy because it is engaged in a partisan effort to undermine the president. Opponents of the president may fear that he is so committed to appearing successful in controlling the disease that he will undermine efforts to actually ensure that happens. And those less dialed in to partisan politics may throw up their hands and conclude that no one seems to know what they are talking about at all. |
The ramifications of that loss of trust could easily be far broader than just public health. When trust in institutions becomes too low, people begin to turn to self-help instead: Those who do not trust the medical establishment eschew mainstream medicines in favor of ineffective or even harmful treatments. Those who do not trust mainstream news sources tune in to peddlers of conspiracy theories on social media. Those who do not trust law enforcement arm themselves or support vigilante violence. All of those measures add to the fear and doubt that spurred them in the first place. And eventually, if the gyre of fear and anger keeps gathering power, it will start to rip the social fabric apart. |
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