There's a Pandemic Marshmallow Test, and States Are Failing

 


A famous study done at Stanford in 1972 tried to find out if young children were able to forego an immediate reward in anticipation of a larger reward later. A researcher would show a kid a marshmallow and tell them something like "I'm going to leave for a while and leave this marshmallow with you. You can eat it if you want, but if it's still here when I get back, I will give you another marshmallow, so you can eat two."

Videos of the experiments are hilarious, with many of the kids struggling to summon the willpower to not eat the marshmallow. Some succeed, and some cave-in and eat the treat. Follow-up studies years later showed that kids who were able to hold out had better outcomes in terms of education and other life outcomes (those findings have since come under question.)

Falling infection numbers are presenting a marshmallow test of sorts to state governments, and they are failing spectacularly. On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott proudly tweeted that, by God, he was eating that marshmallow!


Mississippi is doing the same thing. Arizona's governor just ordered schools back to in-person instruction by the middle of the month. President Biden has criticized the Texas and Mississippi plans as Neanderthal thinking, and seems to have hurt Gov. Tate Reeves's feelings in doing do. 

To be fair, it's not just the red states. Massachusetts is opening restaurants now that the numbers have fallen (and Gov. Christ is getting flack for it). 

I have not yet heard anything about Colorado. I have praised them in the past for their sensible mitigation policies. But their dial framework automatically loosens restrictions based on rates of new cases, positive tests, and hospitalizations, which are falling there like they are everywhere else.

Public health professionals are urging states to definitely hold out for that second marshmallow.  On Monday, CDC Directory Rochelle Walensky said: 

At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of Covid-19 in our communities, not when we are so close. We have the ability to stop a potential fourth surge of cases in this country.

To illustrate her point, here is a graph that Google helpfully popped up yesterday as I was searching for stories related to this post:

I added the red line. It shows that where we are now is same place we were at the peak of the spring surge last year. Nobody (except maybe the COVID deniers) thought that was a good time to be loosening restrictions. Things only look good now in comparison to how bad things got over the winter.   

And the concern is not just about a resurgence of cases.  The virus needs hosts in order to mutate. Public health experts are concerned that if we take our foot off the brake prematurely, we could become another Brazil. 

It still has out-of-control infections rates.  But it is also breeding ground for mutants, one of which is re-infecting people who have already recovered. If that kind of outcome gets established here, we could be right back where we started a year ago.

Meanwhile, a lot of Texans are unhappy with their governor's decision.  The hashtag #ihateithere has been trending on Twitter.

Update March 5

AZ Gov. Doug Ducey just ate the marshmallow too.

Image by pixel1 from Pixabay 

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