March 2022, ScientificAmerican.com 33inconsistent, and citizens struggled to work
together to keep the virus at bay. The roots of
these problems run deep. Since this country’s
inception, the dominant ideologies here have
encouraged not only individualism but also
the dehumanization of certain groups, as evi-
denced by the enslavement of Black people
and the displacement of Indigenous commu-
nities from their ancestral lands. This dehu-
manization continues today in the form of the
bootstrap narrative—the myth that anyone
can prosper if only they work hard enough—
and in efforts to weaken relief programs for
people who need help. As a result, even
though we now know how the virus spreads
and causes disease and we have effective vac-
cines against it, the death toll from COVID is
higher in the U.S. than anywhere else.
There have been some success stories in
the U.S.—they can be found in groups that
have a fundamentally different ideological
relationship to community interdependence.
The Navajo Nation, which early on saw some
of the highest rates of COVID-related illness
and death, ran its own vaccine education
campaigns and implemented in-house vac-
cine-distribution policies. It achieved far
higher vaccination rates on its reservations
than surrounding areas did. Tribal values
that prioritize the group over the individual
helped motivate members to get their shots.
Unfortunately, in late 2021 the virus surged
among the Navajo again, perhaps because of
low vaccination rates in neighboring areas.
A microbe revealed the lie of rugged indi-
vidualism. We are not self-sufficient and in-
dependent; we never have been. Our fates
are bound together. Taking care of others is
taking care of ourselves. With the arrival of
the highly infectious Omicron variant, we
are paying the price for not having devel-
oped strong policies early on and stuck to
them. But that does not mean we should just
give up the fight. Instead we need to redou-
ble our efforts to provide care and resources
to vulnerable community members. The
emergence of each new COVID variant is an
opportunity to reflect on what worked and
what did not with the last one, whether local-
ly or on the other side of the world. Commit-
ting ourselves to upholding our evolutionary
mandate to help one another—not just the
people we see every day but everyone, every-
where—is the only thing that will save us.Robin G. Nelson is a biological anthropologist at Arizona
State University. She studies human sociality and health
outcomes through the lens of evolutionary theory.Illustration by Ellen Weinstein© 2022 Scientific American