Refusing to see our world of gray

By now, you probably have detected a note of — what shall we call it: fatalism, resignation, recognition of reality? — creeping into the language of President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other public figures addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead of taking on the virus, smothering it, conquering it, eradicating it, now we're being told that we will have to learn to live with it as we succeed in rendering it less deadly but not making it disappear. There certainly are familiar things we're still being asked to do in this incipient campaign to manage COVID — like getting more people vaccinated against it, developing more medications to treat it, being more considerate to those more at risk by masking when necessary. But we nevertheless do seem to be in the process of shifting the goal.

And that's OK, even if a lot of folks want to say — or pretend — that it's not, that something is confusing or amiss. Understanding why this shift is OK is a matter of understanding the nature of science, and the reality of nuance.

First, science.

Though we sometimes think of it as a set of immutable facts of life, the truth is that science is never static. It's always progressing. It learns new facts and adapts. We humans used to think the world was flat, the sun revolved around Earth, the universe was stationary, and bloodsucking leeches could both prevent and cure various illnesses and diseases.

Now we know better. But it took time to get there.

This pandemic is barely two years old. We know more now than we did in December 2019 and we'll know much more as time goes. Treatments and advice will change as our knowledge and facts on the ground change. That can be perplexing. But history tells us that science becomes more accurate, not less. That's something to embrace, not reject.

Now, nuance.

This emerging COVID philosophy is a more nuanced message, to be sure. We're being urged to continue a fight in which winning is no longer an outright victory but a kind of grinding stalemate in which suffering is minimized but not erased. It's a tougher message to digest because we Americans — humans in general, Americans in particular — don't do nuance very well. That's to our severe detriment.

In general, we gravitate to absolutes, now more than ever. Something is either great or terrible, right or wrong. That person is either on our side or one of the enemy. We're either beating the virus, or losing to it. We prefer the sharpest edges of contrast, not the softer contours of commonality. We're drawn to black and white like moths to the flame, but we have always lived in a world of gray.

That's easiest to see in our politics. The former president makes clear that you either are totally with him or you're a crazy stupid jerk, as he labeled Republican South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds last week when Rounds had the temerity to say that his party had fairly and squarely lost the 2020 presidential election.

The current president equated opponents of voting rights reforms to Bull Connor, who employed fire hoses and police dogs against civil rights activists in the 1960s. Voting rights legislation is important, and frustrations regarding its blockage are understandable, but its opponents are hardly the equivalent of a brutal white supremacist.

Walt Whitman wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." People and issues, in other words, are complex, richer for the characteristics and details that might not jive easily with one another but that are essential parts of the picture. Ignore some of them, or cut them out, and you miss the full portrait.

Part of our national sickness is our refusal to see things in their fullness — a person, a point of contention, a piece of advice.

It's more difficult, for sure, but there's nothing wrong with embracing our gray, and learning to live with that.

Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie1@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.