#NormalContact

There are lots of news reports and fact check articles coming out about COVID-19 every single day. Sometimes they seem to be saying opposite things, and etc every news articles seems to come with its own exclamation point. “People are dying faster!” “It’s time to to open up!” “The antibody studies have bad data!” “The death rate is lower than we think!” How do you decide what’s true? Unfortunately, figuring out the truth requires work. And sometimes it even requires a lot of work, and you’re the only one that can do it.

Benjamin Franklin returned to his home from the Constitutional Convention, having just helped write the US Constitution, and was famously stopped on the street by an inquisitive woman. She demanded, “What have you given us, sir?” His reply? “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It’s unfortunate that it seems like a small minority want to keep tweaking and pushing our society in directions it doesn’t need to go. It seems like these folks come from both sides of the aisle, and are working with each other more than they work for us. Nevertheless, it is incumbent on us, the People, to watch, and check, and vote knowledgeably. There’s no way that any of us have time to fact check everything that comes out of Washington, the media, or any other sources. Let’s be honest: we don’t even necessarily have time to check even one full article!

What makes a good “fact check?”

The good news is that social media means that we can share the burden, but we still need to understand what good fact checking looks like. Here are some general guidelines.

• If any article (or fact checking, or “debunking” piece) doesn’t contain its sources, watch out! Look out not only for whether the sources are included, but whether scientific claims are being made with sources for some claims but not for others. Which claims have no sources? Do those claims make sense if you only have the info from the sources that were provided elsewhere or should they maybe have had a few more citations? (Compare, for instance, our page on the science behind #NormalContact, where sources are cited throughout. It would be a good fact check article.)
• If the sources in an article are described but not linked, beware! It is sadly common for sources to be cited by memory, rather than double-checking the source for accuracy. Sometimes the memory someone has of a document is missing a key detail, or coming to a different conclusion than the original. (For example, our FAQ page doesn’t have any science linked, but at least links to the appropriate areas of our science page. Its goal isn’t to prove science, just explain things and let folks look up the science if they want. Our FAQ page would be a poor “fact check” article.
• If the sources are only listed at the bottom of an article and not as they are cited throughout the article, ask yourself why. Often, the sources will talk about generally related or background information but not necessarily be enough to draw the conclusion being reached in the article.
• Once you’ve identified the sources listed in an article, check the sources! Yes, this can take time. No, you don’t have to do it yourself. You can post the article on social media and ask for help. Remember to hold friends accountable. Don’t ask, “Is this true?” Instead ask, “Has anyone verified the sources on this?” If someone posts a debunking article as a response, give it the same scrutiny. Did the debunk cite its sources? Were they used appropriately? Did you check the evidence? All too often folks find a troubling article and stop looking for evidence simply because a debunk exists. Make sure to hold everything to the same standard.

Expect the truth to be uncomfortable or inconvenient to uncover. Just like any other treasure, it can be buried. It is, however, extremely precious.

Talking about #NormalContact as a practice can bump into things that we can describe but haven’t had specific terms for. These are some vocabulary terms we suggest using.

• Masker – Someone who advocates or practices the wearing of a mask when out in public
• Unmasker – Someone who chooses not to be masked in public. An unmasker may or may not oppose community masking as a whole. (Interesting note: unlike the other terms on this list, the term ‘unmasker’ is less useful because it doesn’t help us understand what someone wants, only what they do. You would think it would be clear since ‘masker’ is clear, but just being the opposite term doesn’t make it more useful.)
• Stay Homer – Someone who promotes staying home as much as possible during the COVID-19 lockdowns. (The closest opposite to a stay homer would probably be a normal contactor, but not necessarily. A normal contactor could advocate staying home as much as possible but be open to normal contact when they do go out.)
• Outbounder – Someone who advocates getting out during the quarantine orders, perhaps specifically as a form of protest.
• Normal Contactor – Someone who supports the philosophy of #NormalContact
• New Normal – A cultural phenomenon where we can disagree with someone, even vehemently, and yet have a normal conversation and even have fun with each other.

This vocabulary is interesting for a few reasons. First, it shows that opposing terms aren’t necessarily obvious. A masker and unmasker could both be normal contactors. So could a stay homer and an outbounder. This is a perfect example of how the incredibly narrow focus of #NormalContact allows totally differing opinions to agree and participate together, despite their differences. Second, the list illustrates that terms that seem like opposites (masker vs. unmasker, for instance) aren’t necessarily equally useful.

Updated when the “new normal” blog post came out.

There is a surprising monotony of messaging happening right now. News channels all say the same thing. The newspapers all say the same thing. And anything that disagrees with the official narrative on COVID-19 (like the actual science) gets shouted at or removed from the major platforms. Enter #NormalContact stage left, and cue the hysterics. While it’s easy to dismiss the angry stay homers and maskers, perhaps they shouldn’t be shrugged off and made fun of. This is not to imply that their position has significant merit, but that they are just as deserving of our compassion as a normal contactor wearing a ribbon.

We’d like to propose that if there really was going to be a “new normal” that it should start by not dismissing people in their entirety for having an idea, no matter how silly that idea seems. So in the case of people who overreact to #NormalContact, instead of faulting them for their poor logic, perhaps it would be better to look for a way to be compassionate to them in their moment of fear and panic.

See, while their math might be bad, they want the same thing we do, which is for folks to stay healthy and survive as much as possible. We all want to put this COVID-19 stupidity behind us. So when we strive for more #NormalContact in our lives, maybe we can normalize the search to find common ground with everyone, even those crazy folks who think social distancing is all that’s preventing Armageddon. The challenge is to be ok with the person even when their choices might hurt us. That kind of radical acceptance (while still fighting against those choices) would definitely be a new normal to strive for. The biggest challenge would be learning as a society to replace our political identities with human identities.

It seems impossible to think that anyone finds identity politics tolerable. Although they’re designed to make us feel like “our side” is better than “their side” all they really do is create division. As identities collide with more and more ferocity it seems like we’ve become stuck in a whirlpool that will drown us in hate for one another.

This might be in part because politics today have no nuance. (Or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s kind of a “chicken or the egg” problem.) There’s no room to say that you’re in favor of this idea from one party but not another idea from the same party. People group you into one enormous set of beliefs or another, regardless of what you actually believe.

This is one of the reasons that the #NormalContact movement intends to keep such a narrow focus. If we can establish extremely narrow perspectives on lot so of issues that can cross party identity then maybe we can start to respect each other for the common ground we share. We can recognize what we like about each other and connect again for the first time in a long time.

The idea of normal contact gets lumped in with right-wing and pro-Trump causes too often. Either the science makes sense or it doesn’t. (Spoiler: the science behind #NormalContact makes a ton of sense.) There’s nothing political about whether the science is justifiable or not. It’s a human issue, not a political one, and we’re definitely humans first. The identity of “human” should dominate identity politics, not the identity of a party.