Don’t get me wrong. I’m not rushing out to pat anybody on the back with a hearty attaboy or anything. I can give credit for once the collective thumb was pulled out of the collective ass in NY at least things began to move quickly. This is a lot more than I can say for most other states where the response wasn’t just late, but token at best to completely non-existent. Pretty much every state did a terrible job. (I’m still rankled by the Alabama governor’s pleas toward “personal responsibility” rather than taking a hard line – come the fuck on, you just know that’s not going to work.) Even Washington and California that were pretty on the ball in the beginning have been way too quick to start reducing restrictions and are being rewarded with spiking cases once again.
I mean, I live in Washington, I get it. Much of the state has been shut down since the beginning of March. It sucks. But what it comes down to is I would much rather live with the minor inconveniences of not being able to get a haircut or my favorite restaurants being closed than have our healthcare system overrun with sick and dying people from this virus. Maybe instead of rushing to jumpstart the economic death cult the government could step in and do things to actually help people, like suspend rent payments and really help the people who need it.
A lot of things are reopening around here. Traffic is getting shitty again. Places are getting crowded. Meanwhile COVID-19 case rates are rising quickly again after being really low for weeks. Clearly this reopening plan is not working to contain anything but I don’t think there’s the political will to put a stop to this madness and shut things back down.
This is exactly the kind of thing where we should have had a coordinated and consistent response at the federal level. Get the National Guard activated in every state. Get FEMA camps set up in every major city to handle the influx of sick people. Get standardized testing rolled out immediately. Hire tens of thousands of contact tracers. Deploy additional medical staff to rural counties. Immediately activate the DPA and get essentials produced. Damn the lawsuits and political fallout – millions of lives are at stake. These are things a competent president would have done. Instead we have “not my responsibility” Trump at the helm and look at where it’s left us.
