Scalzi: Back Into Quarantine—Noted
John Scalzi: Back Into Quarantine https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/07/05/back-into-quarantine/: ‘We could have managed this thing—like nearly every other country has—if we had political leadership that wasn’t inept and happy to use the greatest public health crisis in decades as political leverage for… well, who knows? Most of the areas being hit hardest now—places like Florida, Arizona, and Texas—are deep red states; there is no political advantage to be had by having them hit by infection and death and economic uncertainty four months before a national election...
...The fact that Joe Biden is currently in a statistical tie with Trump in Texas voter polls should terrify the GOP. I don’t expect Biden to get Texas’ electoral votes in November, but honestly it shouldn’t even be this close now. And the thing is, things are almost certainly going to get worse in Texas before they get better.
In April and May I had held out some hope that the second half of 2020 might be salvageable, and that it would be safe, or at least safer, to do the things we normally might have done with the year. Now that we’re in the second half of the year, it’s pretty clear that 2020 is going to be unsafe all the way through. It didn’t have to be this way. If we are going to have to live with it (and hopefully not precisely in the “fuck it, I guess some of you are just gonna have to die” way that the GOP wants us to), we should admit to precisely whose fault it is. The GOP needs to be punished in November for a number of reasons, and this is certainly qualifies as a major reason. I will leave my house to vote, if I need to.
In the meantime: wear your masks, practice social distancing, and stay home if you can. As my friend Ashley Clements put it: "For anyone who feels like they “wasted” quarantine because they didn’t write a novel or learn a new language or get shredded, I have good news: Quarantine ain’t over get back inside." She’s right. Alas.…
.#coronavirus #moralresponsibility #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-07-05
