"Just because you're tired of something doesn't mean it's gone. And we are gonna pay for it. We're paying for it now. And it's just going to continue to get worse. Prepare for not being able to get into the hospital if you have a car wreck or a heart attack- and there won't be a ventilator to put you on." Dr. Thomas Dobbs,Mississippi Public health officer to Jackson Free Press, yesterday.
"I think a lot of Americans suspected this leader chosen in the last election might not have the right stuff to lead the country well. But this level of multivariate, simultaneous, existentially threatening mass catastrophe ...this is what we've got. Economic disaster, rule of law disaster, health disaster, none of which are abating. They're all getting worse with every passing day. And all of which are cresting simultaneously now onto us." Rachel Maddow, last night.
"If we don't have widespread mask use as we head into the fall as cases are going up we're going to end up shutting down the economy." Dr. Chris Murray, Univ. of Washington Institute of Public Health
"There's no economy when you have a virus out of control. We learned this lesson earlier and now apparently, we have to relearn it... We started to get it under control with tremendous sacrifice that we all made together as citizens of civil society. But it was squandered by our leadership and we're going right back up again, All that pain and suffering, all that staying indoors, they threw it all away." - Chris Hayes last night, on ALL IN
In my March 23rd post I wrote:
"The question, however, is whether mere reason and persuasion can work given we inhabit a nation loaded with entitled people who have little sense of common cause and generally see individual liberty as their personal right. Even in a deadly pandemic which has every capability of wiping them out if they put that personal liberty before cooperative action."
This was in the context of a NY Times piece by Robert McNeil who had written in regard to the potential American response to the pandemic:
"It was not at all clear that a nation so fundamentally committed to individual liberty and distrustful of government could learn to adapt to many of these measures, especially those that smack of state compulsion."
Within two days of reaching (successively) the most cases ever, over 38,000 yesterday and 36, 358 the day before, with 29 states experiencing exponential increases, i.e. R0 > 1.0 we have now seen the enemy and it is us. Americans have fractured into 2 political tribes, which will be to the detriment of us all. I define one of the tribes as faithful to science - namely related to the biology of this virus - and who show it by wearing masks, and social distancing.
The other tribe I define as knuckle dragging imbeciles who reject the concept of public health, and refuse to learn the science underlying the virus. These (mostly Trumpkins) also believe their fake "liberty" trumps the virus impositions and any science related to it. These demented kooks call the mask wearers "sheep" and "slaves" as they harass public health officials to the point of forcing them to resign (like Dr. Amy Acton in Ohio). This is because like children, put into time out for their own good, they rebel against any restrictions. Hence, they hate the mandates - for protective measures - they regard as infringements on their entitlements....errr.. "liberties". Do these whack jobs even know that Texas has now peaked its ICU capacity at 100 %? I doubt it!
These are crazies and extremists like the "Freedom Angels" who recently called out to public health officials in a live video (cf. WSJ, 'Threats on Public Health Officials Rise', p. A6, June 24):
"Hey public health officers you're in our cross hairs!"
According to the Journal piece,
"One of its leaders, Denise Aguilar, demanded the repeal of mask-wearing mandates and called public health officers 'public enemy number one'"
Process that for a second: This virulent virago is calling those who'd move heaven and hearth to save her sorry ass from Covid, 'public enemy number one'. And why is this? Because she interprets a mandate to wear a freaking mask an excessive incursion on her precious freedom. So presumably she prefers to be free and dead if she gets the virus and has to be intubated. Adding insult to injury these misfits have live -streamed their protests outside public health officers' homes - and dispatched this to their 22,000 followers. No, folks, you cannot make this shit up and this is one huge reason - with non-compliant goofballs like this- the nation's Covid cases are spiking and the opening of the economy in numerous states could come to a crashing halt. Indeed, barely ten days ago, the extent of the U.S. deplorable response compared to other nations was already circulating, e.g.
This is Christopher Wilson's chart - from Yahoo News - of how U.S. Covid cases are spiking precipitously (by 36.46%) and more than any other nation in the world. And it's gotten much worse since that appeared on MSNBC June 13.
You can thank Trump and the Right who have incited their zombies into treating masks as political submission and a part of identity politics. So all who wear them are "sheep" or "slaves" and those who mandate them are "Nazis" or "commies", opposed to "our" liberty as "sovereign citizens". So the red state Trumpers refuse to comply with this simple precaution, taking it as a sign of being a "slave" or submission. (Some of the "arguments" used by the anti-mask bunch is that they "afford little protection" (hint: they protect others from you) and they lead to "oxygen deprivation" (False). Again, these examples merely show how a lie or mind virus can spread to gullible and weak brains as easily as a biological virus. As the Santa Cruz , CA director of public health put it (last night on Maddow) , this makes them "Ungovernable".
The tragic result is that even in states where the case incidence is trending exponential they happily help the virus to spread further. The political backlash is so virulent now that we behold medical doctors like Dr. Nicole Quick being forced to resign in Orange County, CA after being called a Nazi and receiving a death threat over an order to wear masks. This, despite the fact that mask wearing is the key to staying safe in any large reopening. Oh, and definitely preferable to continuing in lockdown mode!
But even among more intelligent news and media consumers I will admit there is wide confusion, as a result of bilge sown often by the media Rightists and reactionaries. A case in point is yesterday's WSJ editorial 'Coping With Covid 19' (p. A16) which insists:
"Flare ups are inevitable but new lockdowns aren't the answer".
But they may have to be the answer - as in Texas now (under Gov. Greg Abbott's reopening pause) - if hospital ICUs are being overrun, as in Houston and three other TX cities. A particularly vile remark in the above editorial was:
"There's no denying the flare ups, even if some in the media seem to enjoy the rise in cases and the hospitalizations in Arizona, Florida, Texas and other hot spots in the South and West."
But if these knotheads saw recent episodes of Chris Hayes 'All In' or Rachel Maddow, they'd not see any jubilation but a terrible regret this nation was unable to rise to the challenge of containing this virus like other nations, such as Spain and Italy. The biggest face plant in the piece is when the WSJ editors claimed (presumably with straight face):
"The mistake is thinking that in a country of 330 million people a single top-down Washington plan would crush the virus."
Except it just might have, as opposed to a hare- brained "no coordinated plan" - allowing a misplaced "federalism" and each state going its own way, competing with all others for ppe and reopening even when the minimal criteria to justify it are not in place. Case in point a new University of Washington study shows 33,000 lives can be saved through October by way of mandated mask wearing. What the reopening fanatics, anti-mask dregs and their allies don't yet understand is that the ultimate fate of this nation is not in their hands but the vast silent majority who simply will refuse to participate in any aspect of the economy if they feel that would be fraught with risk. As Chris Hayes observed last night (All In): "You cannot force people into an unsafe situation in the midst of an outbreak."
More collectively organized societies grasp that accepting more rigorous governance is needed in a national crisis and self interest must take a backseat. You simply don't get the luxury of governing yourself when the welfare of the nation or community is at stake. It's time the current crop of rabid "liberty from health mandates" did too - especially when we are in a similar war mode as my folks were in World War II - in terms of mobilizing critical resources, especially medical equipment. In this regard I am always reminded of my folks' sacrifices. Did they pout and cry because they had to adhere to strict curfews, gas and food rationing and state rules? Of course not, because they put on their 'big boy' pants and understood they were all in that great moment together, to subdue a common foe. We can do less now. Less thought of "me", much more of "WE".
If we are to emerge whole from this "multivariate" crisis (in the words of Rachel Maddow) we need all citizens to cooperate and that means accepting public health mandates like adults, not hurling poop against the walls and screaming like toddlers.
See Also:
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If we are to emerge whole from this "multivariate" crisis (in the words of Rachel Maddow) we need all citizens to cooperate and that means accepting public health mandates like adults, not hurling poop against the walls and screaming like toddlers.
See Also:
Trump Has Sabotaged America's Coronavirus Response
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