Kathianne
05-15-2020, 11:01 AM
Came across this, pretty much says what I've been saying, just so much better:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-be-charitable-to-your-fellow-americans/
A Plea for Generosity
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
May 14, 2020 6:32 PM
Crucial to Protecting Our Environment
U.S.
A Plea for Generosity
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
May 14, 2020 6:32 PM
Be charitable to your fellow Americans, because they’re just like you: trying to live the best they can while the coronavirus remains a threat.
If you judged by social media, you’d think that America in the coronavirus crisis had a pro-lockdown faction led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and a “let it rip” faction led by a handful of red-state governors and professional conservative saber-rattlers. This may be a useful narrative for people whose jobs thrive on controversy, myself included. It may even be helpful for organizing our thoughts on the virus. But mostly, it just isn’t true.
What is true is that people will feel themselves instinctively sympathetic to one message or another ringing out from these online camps, whether it’s, “I’m done with this” or, “The health of my spouse is more important than your haircut” or simply, “This is unsustainable.”
The public polling seems to show that a significant minority thinks our pandemic-control measures have gone too far, even as a significant majority supports continued efforts at social distancing. Capable public leadership and institutions can, through heroic effort, more or less harmonize those instincts. In East Asian countries, a public conditioned by the 2003 SARS outbreak met a proactive public-health response, allowing cities such as Seoul and Singapore to get to back to something resembling normal more quickly than their European and American counterparts. (The plight of Singapore’s foreign workers does slightly complicate this narrative, to be fair.) The worse or more laggardly the response, the more that “the economy” and “public health” seem like irreconcilable goals rather than two parts of the same puzzle.
...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-be-charitable-to-your-fellow-americans/
A Plea for Generosity
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
May 14, 2020 6:32 PM
Crucial to Protecting Our Environment
U.S.
A Plea for Generosity
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
May 14, 2020 6:32 PM
Be charitable to your fellow Americans, because they’re just like you: trying to live the best they can while the coronavirus remains a threat.
If you judged by social media, you’d think that America in the coronavirus crisis had a pro-lockdown faction led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and a “let it rip” faction led by a handful of red-state governors and professional conservative saber-rattlers. This may be a useful narrative for people whose jobs thrive on controversy, myself included. It may even be helpful for organizing our thoughts on the virus. But mostly, it just isn’t true.
What is true is that people will feel themselves instinctively sympathetic to one message or another ringing out from these online camps, whether it’s, “I’m done with this” or, “The health of my spouse is more important than your haircut” or simply, “This is unsustainable.”
The public polling seems to show that a significant minority thinks our pandemic-control measures have gone too far, even as a significant majority supports continued efforts at social distancing. Capable public leadership and institutions can, through heroic effort, more or less harmonize those instincts. In East Asian countries, a public conditioned by the 2003 SARS outbreak met a proactive public-health response, allowing cities such as Seoul and Singapore to get to back to something resembling normal more quickly than their European and American counterparts. (The plight of Singapore’s foreign workers does slightly complicate this narrative, to be fair.) The worse or more laggardly the response, the more that “the economy” and “public health” seem like irreconcilable goals rather than two parts of the same puzzle.
...