Come gather round people: why we risk death to join the crowd

By Virginia Heffernan

We were promised a summer of physical inhibition and prudent distancing. Instead we Americans got crowds. We just couldn’t resist one another. Love was too weak or antique a pretext for coming together in a plague year, so we landed on fury instead. During protests, with their mosh pits and riot police and fire-eyed cyclists charging through cities like Mongolian cavalry, we seemed hellbent on crashing against one another.

Maybe we had simply been starved of other bodies after a long, dry season. In June a pastor in San Antonio, angry that some in his flock were withering away for lack of Christian company, instructed church-goers to hug one another. They gregariously shared microbes and 50 of them, including the pastor and his wife, contracted covid-19.