Tubful of Trust

He grins up at me from his stubby two-foot stature, a glint of mischief in his eyes. His mother’s eye had the same glint at that age, the same corn silk hair. “Gamps… bath?” Huh?

He wants you to give him his bath!

Ooh… kay… I guess it’s been a few years, but how hard can it be? Before I know it, there’s a little chubby hand in mind and we’re padding down the hallway.

I run the water and froth it up with some Johnson and Johnson No More Tears, while my little buddy eagerly strips down to his Mowgli suit and waits to be lifted in.

Soon there’s a contented splashing and bubbling with a short length of hose, interrupted occasionally as a little upturned face checks that Gramps is paying attention.

Children are a mystery, and perhaps grandchildren even more so. As I say, the mischievous glint is familiar, but the inverted half-moon smiling eyes are not. There is also a certain fragility or vulnerability that’s unfamiliar to me after our brood of brawlers — I think his dad’s folks are like that.

What goes on inside that little head? What mysterious alchemy of childhood development and grandparental devotion has precipitated this moment of trust, ephemeral as a soap bubble?

Is trust even the right word? Does he even realize how precariously his safety hangs on the aging reflexes of a man given to daydreaming, given how quickly a child can slip, bang his head. I’m told you can drown in two inches of water.

Before any disasters strike, I give him a perfunctory once-over with the washcloth, wrap him in a towel, deliver him to his mother still wriggling and giggling, and retire to my rocker and the Atlantic Monthly.

Soon I’m immersed in a Derek Thomson article about the Eureka Theory of History. He outlines the history of the development of the smallpox vaccine and the eventual global near-eradication of the disease and contrasts this with the recent global response to Covid-19.

In both cases there was a scientific breakthrough followed by the challenges of cultural acceptance and widespread implementation. Thomson argues that the breakthrough itself, the ‘eureka moment’ if you will, has been overemphasized in our retelling of history, while the overcoming of the subsequent challenges is actually more critical if progress is to be made.

In the case of mRNA vaccines, the initial research goes back to the 1990’s and by 2020 the technology had progressed to the point that within 48 hours of receiving the genetic sequencing of the coronavirus, Moderna had prepared its COVID-vaccine recipe.

Operation Warp Speed channeled billions of dollars into spooling up manufacturing and logistics capacity and by April 2021 the US had distributed more shots per capita than almost any country in the world.

By September, we ranked 36th in the world, behind Mongolia and Ecuador.

The problem was not supply, but demand. Thomson quotes a 2022 study in the medical journal ‘The Lancet’ in which the authors analyzed which variables best predicted rates of Covid infection across 177 countries. Outside of wealth, one of the most significant factors was trust in government among the public, and the authors conclude “Trust is a shared resource that enables networks of people to do collectively what individual actors cannot.”

In Thomson’s view, progress in America has stalled due to an erosion of trust.

I put down the magazine and remove my glasses. Trust as a shared resource. I never thought of it like that.

Earlier, at the bathtub, I had been thinking of trust in terms of a specific relationship and almost as a revelation. But there are other ways we speak of trust. The word is carved on the lintels of banks and appears on dollar bills and in familiar bible passages. Trust can be earned, given, betrayed. Trust can grow. Trust can be lost.

But trust as a shared resource?

It strikes me that at this time in history we are not doing too well with shared resources. Every four days a SpaceX rocket carries a payload of Starlink satellites into the stratosphere, bringing ever more internet bandwidth to the masses and further enriching the richest man on earth. Amazon warehouses sprout like mushrooms after a rain in every major metro area. One-click purchases, drone delivery, more more, faster faster.

The Sahara creeps southward. Cracks appear where the Colorado once flowed. And deep underground, invisible aquafers recede.

What will we do when we go to the well and find it has run dry?

Can trust be restored?