America Fails the Marshmallow Test

America Fails the Marshmallow Test: [the defiantly-selfish] lack the will to beat COVID-19.

"The marshmallow test is a famous psychological experiment that tests children’s willingness to delay gratification. Children are offered a marshmallow, but told that they can have a second marshmallow if they’re willing to wait 15 minutes before eating the first one. Claims that children with the willpower to hold out do much better in life haven’t held up well, but the experiment is still a useful metaphor for many choices in life, both by individuals and by larger groups.

One way to think about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it poses a kind of marshmallow test for society."

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"In many parts of the country — including our most populous states, California, Texas, and Florida — the disease is still spreading. Overall, new cases are plateauing and may be starting to rise. Yet state governments are moving to reopen anyway."

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"America’s impatience, its unwillingness to do what it takes to deal with a threat that can’t be beaten with threats of violence, runs much deeper than one man.

It doesn’t help that RepuGNicans are [have been brainwashed to be] ideologically [and selfishly] opposed to government safety-net programs, which are what make the economic consequences of social distancing tolerable; as I explain in my recent column, they seem determined to let crucial emergency relief expire far too soon. Nor does it help that even low-cost measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, above all wearing face masks (which mainly protect other people), have been caught up in our culture wars.

America in 2020, it seems, is too disunited, with too many people in the grip of [selfish] ideology and [combative] partisanship, to deal effectively with a pandemic. We have the knowledge, we have the resources, but [spoilt my-opinion-counts-more-than facts pueriles [sic]] don’t have the will."