Trump and his "kung-flu" and "China virus" ethnic slurs
University of Pittsburgh
But could these instincts, developed to protect us from illnesses, generalize into avoidance of healthy individuals who simply look, speak or live differently?
Jessica
Stephenson, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in
the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, coauthored a paper
exploring the answer, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the
Royal Society of London, Series B.
One
example noted in the study showed that black garden ants exposed to a fungus
clustered together in groups much smaller than researchers could predict by
chance, which effectively limited the spread of disease. Similar behaviors seen
among 19 non-human primate species were also credited for lowering direct
spread of parasites.
Human
beings share these same biological impulses to separate into modular social
groups. However, when pathogens are spreading, humans tend to also adopt a set
of behaviors that are "hypervigilant and particularly error prone,"
the researchers wrote.
"It's interesting and really disappointing," Stephenson said. And as COVID-19 continues its spread, humans are even more susceptible to the impulse.
"During
epidemics, humans tend to become overly sensitive, so any sort of physical
abnormality that somebody has suddenly becomes a potential indicator of
infection. We become much more bigoted, we pay way more attention to things
that differentiate people from what we perceive as our own phenotype. People
who look different from us and sound different from us, which, of course, leads
to a lot more xenophobia," said Stephenson, who runs Stephenson Lab of
Disease Ecology and Evolutionary Parasitology at Pitt.
A
prior Stephenson study published in The Royal Society Biology Letters in
November 2019 outlined how individuals differ in their response to potential
contagion. In both humans and the guppies she studied, the individuals most
susceptible to the disease showed the strongest avoidance.
During
that study, male guppies were placed in a large tank, flanked by a smaller one
containing a group of three female guppies that were visibly infected with
parasites. Many males preferred to spend time near the female guppies, despite the
risk of contagion. But some male guppies strongly avoided the other fish. The
socially distant male guppies were later shown to be highly susceptible to worm
infections.
Stephenson
said human beings are generally "normal social animals in many of our behavioral
responses to infectious diseases." But, if humans choose social urges over
infection control, efforts such as global disease surveillance and centralized
public health responses could be wasted, she said.
"That
the vast majority of our species has largely squandered the potential payoffs
of these benefits is again consistent with other social animals: the cost of
social distancing itself can outweigh the cost of contracting the
disease," Stephenson said.
But
humans have a leg up on fish: access to information and means of virtual
communication. Stephenson's 2020 study noted that synchronous communication,
virtual or not, can mitigate some of the effects of confinement.
Computer-mediated discussions can also promote more equal participation from minority
groups.
"For
some, no amount of Zoom and FaceTime can make up for the lost benefits of
social interactions. These frustrating, if wholly natural, behavioral decisions
will result in the persistence of COVID-19 until the advent of perhaps our
greatest advantage over other species facing emerging infectious diseases:
vaccination."
"We
shouldn't discriminate against different groups in our social distancing, or in
our efforts to work together to beat the virus," she added. "But I
think our natural, evolved tendencies would be to associate only within our
ingroups. We have to fight that natural antipathy towards people who differ
from ourselves, and not shut down."
