So…two months of near-isolation. Thanks to the phone, the Internet, Zoom and other forms of communication, I don't feel as isolated as I might but still…
People keep asking, "When do you think this will end?" and the answer, it seems to me, is increasingly, "Whenever you decide it's safe for you to end it for yourself." The folks out there rallying for legislation to "reopen" do not convince me that (a) they're listening to medical authorities or (b) my best interests matter to them.
Some of them sure want us all out there, bolstering the economy with normal activity even if it kills us. Look at this news item, especially the incredible sentence I've highlighted in my excerpt…
Leading U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Tuesday warned Congress that a premature lifting of lockdowns could lead to additional outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus, which has killed 80,000 Americans and brought the economy to its knees. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate panel that the virus epidemic is not yet under control in areas of the nation.
"I think we're going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak," Fauci said during hours of testimony. He urged states to follow health experts' recommendations to wait for signs including a declining number of new infections before reopening.
Someone is sitting before a Congressional committee trying to convince them to listen to medical experts about a medical matter instead of just substituting their own hunches and guesses and hopes.
This is not new. We've been through this with Climate Change…elected officials who have to preface their speeches with "I'm not a scientist but…" ignoring scientists on matters of science. This is not much different from "You know, I've never studied surgery but I'm pretty confident I can perform a liver transplant on you."
So I'm staying in. They're going to "open up" whatever they want to "open up" because they think a lot more sick and/or dead people is a reasonable price to pay for immediate economic and/or political gains. I can't do anything about that except to not participate and hope that enough Americans don't participate that it doesn't spike the death toll, which is still going up, like the tote board in the closing hour of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. (If you want to know a good measure of how to tell when it's going down, read Kevin Drum's piece about the R0 metric.)
Also, read Kevin about this simple fact that's being shoved aside: Even among Republicans, the consensus of Americans is that there's a big danger in trying to reopen the economy too soon.
The government can reopen public gathering places but they can't force us to go gather in them. I'm still fine here in the Fortress. I hope you're fine in yours. You probably are if you're in yours.