That story of the Pope is very powerful and illustrates the principles very well. Do you have any insights or particular comments to make about how we see cognitive dissonance playing out in behavior toward the COVID epidemic?

Yes, in fact, Elliot and I wrote a little piece for the Atlantic on this, which has been picked up in many places. See, this is very interesting. Had the administration had Donald Trump said at the outset, we are now facing a horrific pandemic. We are going to learn from the pandemic of 1918, when many people refused to wear masks, they hated masks, they thought they were an infringement on their freedom. And we saw the disaster that ensued when in the pandemic, people failed to follow that very simple procedure to reduce the risk of infection. There was no uniform, clear statement about masks. I will say, Dr. Pouchy, who said, don't wear masks, they really don't do much, it's not very helpful. He was doing that because he was worried that there would be hoarding of masks, which are health professionals so desperately, desperately needed, and there were not enough masks in preparation, but instead of saying we need them for our health workers, the rest of you guys go wear a bandana until we can get more masks. Anyway, the point being that there was no uniform, clear statement to the public about what the country as a whole needed to do, what we as individuals needed to do. And as a result, that meant that individuals and individual states could decide what they wanted to do about these procedures, and very, very quickly. Now, as in 1918, the issue of masks became a symbol of your political affiliation. So many people saying, you know, I'm not wearing no mask, you know, what if it's an infringement on my freedom, I can't breathe, it's going to keep me from breathing, it's, you know, going to kill me, whatever the rationalizations you see, you can see that it, as long as it became a sign that if you were wearing a mask, you were a damn Democrat, as opposed to a healthy American, right, as soon as it got to find that way, then people felt well if I have to choose between my loyalty to the president who's not wearing a mask and putting myself at risk of catching this terrible disease, I'm going to go with my president. See, that is the fascinating thing about how dissonance works. People will reduce dissonance in a way to justify their identity or their loyalty or their belief, even putting their own lives at risk. We have seen this over and over, not just in dealing with the pandemic, but in dealing with so many other beliefs that people have, I'm not going to get I'm not going to have my children vaccinated, I'm not going to do that have this medical intervention that will save me, because if I do that, I have to admit I was wrong, I have to admit I was wrong. And you look at people like this and you say, have to admit that you wrong, why is that so hard? Well, cognitive dissonance explains why it's so hard. So yes, tragically dissonance is all too apparent in the issue of masks. And I fear possibly when vaccines become available. If people see masks as a political decision rather than a medical one.