The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying

[Rogue 9]

The Atlantic

The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying

The pandemic has exposed the bitter terms of our racial contract, which deems certain lives of greater value than others.
May 8, 2020
Adam Serwer
Staff writer at The Atlantic

Six weeks ago, Ahmaud Arbery went out and never came home. Gregory and Travis McMichael, who saw Arbery running through their neighborhood just outside of Brunswick, Georgia, and who told authorities they thought he was a burglary suspect, armed themselves, pursued Arbery, and then shot him dead.

The local prosecutor, George E. Barnhill, concluded that no crime had been committed. Arbery had tried to wrest a shotgun from Travis McMichael before being shot, Barnhill wrote in a letter to the police chief. The two men who had seen a stranger running, and decided to pick up their firearms and chase him, had therefore acted in self-defense when they confronted and shot him, Barnhill concluded. On Tuesday, as video of the shooting emerged on social media, a different Georgia prosecutor announced that the case would be put to a grand jury; the two men were arrested and charged with murder yesterday evening after video of the incident sparked national outrage across the political spectrum.

To see the sequence of events that led to Arbery’s death as benign requires a cascade of assumptions. One must assume that two men arming themselves and chasing down a stranger running through their neighborhood is a normal occurrence. One must assume that the two armed white men had a right to self-defense, and that the black man suddenly confronted by armed strangers did not. One must assume that state laws are meant to justify an encounter in which two people can decide of their own volition to chase, confront, and kill a person they’ve never met.

But Barnhill’s leniency is selective—as The Appeal’s Josie Duffy Rice notes, Barnhill attempted to prosecute Olivia Pearson, a black woman, for helping another black voter use an electronic voting machine. A crime does not occur when white men stalk and kill a black stranger. A crime does occur when black people vote.

The underlying assumptions of white innocence and black guilt are all part of what the philosopher Charles Mills calls the “racial contract.” If the social contract is the implicit agreement among members of a society to follow the rules—for example, acting lawfully, adhering to the results of elections, and contesting the agreed-upon rules by nonviolent means—then the racial contract is a codicil rendered in invisible ink, one stating that the rules as written do not apply to nonwhite people in the same way. The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal; the racial contract limits this to white men with property. The law says murder is illegal; the racial contract says it’s fine for white people to chase and murder black people if they have decided that those black people scare them. “The terms of the Racial Contract,” Mills wrote, “mean that nonwhite subpersonhood is enshrined simultaneously with white personhood.”

The racial contract is not partisan—it guides staunch conservatives and sensitive liberals alike—but it works most effectively when it remains imperceptible to its beneficiaries. As long as it is invisible, members of society can proceed as though the provisions of the social contract apply equally to everyone. But when an injustice pushes the racial contract into the open, it forces people to choose whether to embrace, contest, or deny its existence. Video evidence of unjustified shootings of black people is so jarring in part because it exposes the terms of the racial contract so vividly. But as the process in the Arbery case shows, the racial contract most often operates unnoticed, relying on Americans to have an implicit understanding of who is bound by the rules, and who is exempt from them.

The implied terms of the racial contract are visible everywhere for those willing to see them. A 12-year-old with a toy gun is a dangerous threat who must be met with lethal force; armed militias drawing beads on federal agents are heroes of liberty. Struggling white farmers in Iowa taking billions in federal assistance are hardworking Americans down on their luck; struggling single parents in cities using food stamps are welfare queens. Black Americans struggling in the cocaine epidemic are a “bio-underclass” created by a pathological culture; white Americans struggling with opioid addiction are a national tragedy. Poor European immigrants who flocked to an America with virtually no immigration restrictions came “the right way”; poor Central American immigrants evading a baroque and unforgiving system are gang members and terrorists.

The coronavirus epidemic has rendered the racial contract visible in multiple ways. Once the disproportionate impact of the epidemic was revealed to the American political and financial elite, many began to regard the rising death toll less as a national emergency than as an inconvenience. Temporary measures meant to prevent the spread of the disease by restricting movement, mandating the wearing of masks, or barring large social gatherings have become the foulest tyranny. The lives of workers at the front lines of the pandemic—such as meatpackers, transportation workers, and grocery clerks—have been deemed so worthless that legislators want to immunize their employers from liability even as they force them to work under unsafe conditions. In East New York, police assault black residents for violating social-distancing rules; in Lower Manhattan, they dole out masks and smiles to white pedestrians.

Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, with its vows to enforce state violence against Mexican immigrants, Muslims, and black Americans, was built on a promise to enforce terms of the racial contract that Barack Obama had ostensibly neglected, or violated by his presence. Trump’s administration, in carrying out an explicitly discriminatory agenda that valorizes cruelty, war crimes, and the entrenchment of white political power, represents a revitalized commitment to the racial contract.

But the pandemic has introduced a new clause to the racial contract. The lives of disproportionately black and brown workers are being sacrificed to fuel the engine of a faltering economy, by a president who disdains them. This is the COVID contract.

As the first cases of the coronavirus were diagnosed in the United States, in late January and early February, the Trump administration and Fox News were eager to play down the risk it posed. But those early cases, tied to international travel, ensnared many members of the global elite: American celebrities, world leaders, and those with close ties to Trump himself. By March 16, the president had reversed course, declaring a national emergency and asking Americans to avoid social gatherings.

The purpose of the restrictions was to flatten the curve of infections, to keep the spread of the virus from overwhelming the nation’s medical infrastructure, and to allow the federal government time to build a system of testing and tracing that could contain the outbreak. Although testing capacity is improving, the president has very publicly resisted investing the necessary resources, because testing would reveal more infections; in his words, “by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

Over the weeks that followed the declaration of an emergency, the pandemic worsened and the death toll mounted. Yet by mid-April, conservative broadcasters were decrying the restrictions, small bands of armed protesters were descending on state capitols, and the president was pressing to lift the constraints.

In the interim, data about the demographics of COVID-19 victims began to trickle out. On April 7, major outlets began reporting that preliminary data showed that black and Latino Americans were being disproportionately felled by the coronavirus. That afternoon, Rush Limbaugh complained, “If you dare criticize the mobilization to deal with this, you’re going to be immediately tagged as a racist.” That night, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced, “It hasn’t been the disaster that we feared.” His colleague Brit Hume mused that “the disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought.” The nationwide death toll that day was just 13,000 people; it now stands above 70,000, a mere month later.

As Matt Gertz writes, some of these premature celebrations may have been an overreaction to the changes in the prominent coronavirus model designed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which had recently revised its estimates down to about 60,000 deaths by August. But even as the mounting death toll proved that estimate wildly optimistic, the chorus of right-wing elites demanding that the economy reopen grew louder. By April 16, the day the first anti-lockdown protests began, deaths had more than doubled, to more than 30,000.

That more and more Americans were dying was less important than who was dying.

The disease is now “infecting people who cannot afford to miss work or telecommute—grocery store employees, delivery drivers and construction workers,” The Washington Post reported. Air travel has largely shut down, and many of the new clusters are in nursing homes, jails and prisons, and factories tied to essential industries. Containing the outbreak was no longer a question of social responsibility, but of personal responsibility. From the White House podium, Surgeon General Jerome Adams told “communities of color” that “we need you to step up and help stop the spread.”

Public-health restrictions designed to contain the outbreak were deemed absurd. They seemed, in Carlson’s words, “mindless and authoritarian,” a “weird kind of arbitrary fascism.” To restrict the freedom of white Americans, just because nonwhite Americans are dying, is an egregious violation of the racial contract. The wealthy luminaries of conservative media have sought to couch their opposition to restrictions as advocacy on behalf of workers, but polling shows that those most vulnerable to both the disease and economic catastrophe want the outbreak contained before they return to work.

Although the full picture remains unclear, researchers have found that disproportionately-black counties “account for more than half of coronavirus cases and nearly 60 percent of deaths.”* The disproportionate burden that black and Latino Americans are bearing is in part a direct result of their overrepresentation in professions where they risk exposure, and of a racial gap in wealth and income that has left them more vulnerable to being laid off. Black and Latino workers are overrepresented among the essential, the unemployed, and the dead.

This is a very old and recognizable story—political and financial elites displaying a callous disregard for the workers of any race who make their lives of comfort possible. But in America, where labor and race are so often intertwined, the racial contract has enabled the wealthy to dismiss workers as both undeserving and expendable. White Americans are also suffering, but the perception that the coronavirus is largely a black and brown problem licenses elites to dismiss its impact. In America, the racial contract has shaped the terms of class war for centuries; the COVID contract shapes it here.

This tangled dynamic played out on Tuesday, during oral arguments over Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’s statewide stay-at-home order before the state Supreme Court, held remotely. Chief Justice Patience Roggensack was listening to Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Colin Roth defend the order.

“When you see a virus like this one that does not respect county boundaries, this started out predominantly in Madison and Milwaukee; then we just had this outbreak in Brown County very recently in the meatpacking plants,” Roth explained. “The cases in Brown County in a span of two weeks surged over tenfold, from 60 to almost 800—”

“Due to the meatpacking, though, that’s where Brown County got the flare,” Roggensack interrupted to clarify. “It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.”

Perhaps Roggensack did not mean that the largely Latino workers in Brown County’s meatpacking plants—who have told reporters that they have been forced to work in proximity with one another, often without masks or hand sanitizer, and without being notified that their colleagues are infected—are not “regular folks” like the other residents of the state. Perhaps she merely meant that their line of work puts them at greater risk, and so the outbreaks in the meatpacking plants, seen as essential to the nation’s food supply, are not rationally related to the governor’s stay-at-home order, from which they would be exempt.

Yet either way, Roggensack was drawing a line between “regular folks” and the workers who keep them fed, mobile, safe, and connected. And America’s leaders have treated those workers as largely expendable, praising their valor while disregarding their safety.

“There were no masks. There was no distancing inside the plant, only [in the] break room. We worked really close to each other,” Raquel Sanchez Alvarado, a worker with American Foods, a Wisconsin meatpacking company, told local reporters in mid-April. “People are scared that they will be fired and that they will not find a job at another company if they express their concerns.”

In Colorado, hundreds of workers in meatpacking plants have contracted the coronavirus. In South Dakota, where a Smithfield plant became the site of an outbreak infecting more than 700 workers, a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the issue was their “large immigrant population.” On Tuesday, when Iowa reported that thousands of workers at meat-processing plants had become infected, Governor Kim Reynolds was bragging in The Washington Post about how well her approach to the coronavirus had worked.

Although, by the official tally, more than 70,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, many governors are rushing to reopen their states without sufficient testing to contain their outbreaks. (Statistical analyses of excess deaths in comparison with years past suggest that COVID-19 casualties are approaching and may soon exceed 100,000.) Yet the Trump administration is poised to declare “mission accomplished,” engaging in the doublespeak of treating the pandemic as though the major risks have passed, while rhetorically preparing the country for thousands more deaths. The worst-case scenarios may not come to pass. But federal policy reflects the president’s belief that he has little to lose by gambling with the lives of those Americans most likely to be affected.

“We can’t keep our country closed down for years,” Trump said Wednesday. But that was no one’s plan. The plan was to buy time to take the necessary steps to open the country safely. But the Trump administration did not do that, because it did not consider the lives of the people dying worth the effort or money required to save them.

The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, and the Trump administration’s failure to prepare for it even as it crippled the world’s richest nations, cannot be overstated. Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed. Tens of thousands line up outside food banks and food pantries each week to obtain sustenance they cannot pay for. Businesses across the country are struggling and failing. The economy cannot be held in stasis indefinitely—the longer it is, the more people will suffer.

Yet the only tension between stopping the virus and reviving the economy is one the Trump administration and its propaganda apparatus have invented. Economists are in near-unanimous agreement that the safest path requires building the capacity to contain the virus before reopening the economy—precisely because new waves of deaths will drive Americans back into self-imposed isolation, destroying the consumer spending that powers economic growth. The federal government can afford the necessary health infrastructure and financial aid; it already shelled out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to wealthy Americans. But the people in charge do not consider doing so to be worthwhile—Republicans have already dismissed aid to struggling state governments that laid off a million workers this month alone as a “blue-state bailout,” while pushing for more tax cuts for the rich.

“The people of our country are warriors,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”

The frame of war allows the president to call for the collective sacrifice of laborers without taking the measures necessary to ensure their safety, while the upper classes remain secure at home. But the workers who signed up to harvest food, deliver packages, stack groceries, drive trains and buses, and care for the sick did not sign up for war, and the unwillingness of America’s political leadership to protect them is a policy decision, not an inevitability. Trump is acting in accordance with the terms of the racial contract, which values the lives of those most likely to be affected less than the inconveniences necessary to preserve them. The president’s language of wartime unity is a veil draped over a federal response that offers little more than contempt for those whose lives are at risk. To this administration, they are simply fuel to keep the glorious Trump economy burning.

Collective solidarity in response to the coronavirus remains largely intact—most Americans support the restrictions and are not eager to sacrifice their lives or those of their loved ones for a few points of gross domestic product. The consistency across incomes and backgrounds is striking in an era of severe partisan polarization. But solidarity with the rest of the nation among elite Republicans—those whose lives and self-conceptions are intertwined with the success of the Trump presidency—began eroding as soon as the disproportionate impact of the outbreak started to emerge.

The president’s cavalier attitude is at least in part a reflection of his fear that the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus will doom his political fortunes in November. But what connects the rise of the anti-lockdown protests, the president’s dismissal of the carnage predicted by his own administration, and the eagerness of governors all over the country to reopen the economy before developing the capacity to do so safely is the sense that those they consider “regular folks” will be fine.

Many of them will be. People like Ahmaud Arbery, whose lives are depreciated by the terms of the racial contract, will not.

*Correction: An earlier version of this piece misdescribed a study showing disproportionately black counties were responsible for over half of coronavirus cases in the United States by describing those counties as “majority black.” We regret the error.

[Knife]

For now, but as it enters the Mid West, that'll change.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just what I've been saying: the regime is knowingly, willfully exacerbating the disease, because its primarily killing people they regard as subhuman and needing to be gotten rid of.

I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like a genocide.

[Zaune]

You know, I don't think it is some sort of premeditated policy choice like that, or even opportunism. I think it's something, arguably, much worse: Simple indifference. Look at all the effort that has gone into securing ventilators and PPE; there's been no particularly organised attempt at denying it to counties with a significant non-white population, just to force states to bid against each other and rake in as much cash as possible. Someone really committed to white-supremacist ideology would be willing to take at least a small financial hit for the cause.

So far as I can tell, most of the people we're dealing with here aren't revelling in the death toll, or even justifying it to themselves because it serves some greater good. They just... don't really notice it, because it's not happening to anyone they know so it can't be that important, right?

I hate the fact I had to type this, but... I think I prefer the actual, committed Nazis. I mean, if I'm walking down the street and someone empties a bucket of petrol over my head and then throws a lit match because they believe the world would become a slightly better place if I wasn't in it (not a complete non-hypothetical because I dropped a rather strong hint that I'm queer on Facebook earlier today) then that's bad enough. But if someone happens to be driving past and sees a burning man run screaming down the street, looks down at the fire extinguisher in the door bins, then decides to drive on because they don't feel like spending £20 on a replacement? That's a rather literal case of adding insult to injury, that is.

[The Romulan Republic]

The end result is the same, though- people are dead because of who they are, and because a group of powerful people deemed them unworthy of life, and acted accordingly.

Of course, there's a danger in equating mistakes or bad policy with deliberate murder. There's no way to completely prevent loss of life, and even a well-intentioned policy may backfire, or a government may have to choose the lesser evil. We can't regard every failed policy as a genocide, or the term loses meaning and governing becomes impossible.

But this is a case where there is a very immediate, obvious crisis, on a massive scale, and the regime is deliberately ignoring the scientific and medical consensus on a number of points. Worse, they're doing it and then lying about it, which shows that they know the actions they're taking are wrong, or at least would be widely viewed as such. And they're doing it while setting a different standard for themselves and those they choose to favor. Florida had no problem getting aid. Trump and his inner circle have no problem getting tested. So its not simply incompetence or a policy of debatable merit. The pattern shows knowledge that what they're doing will harm and kill people, disproportionately of groups they have previously targeted and dehumanized, and that they are proceeding in that knowledge, and then covering it up.

[Solauren]

I don't think that the lackluster response is racially, financially or even politically motivated. Because then it would be consistent.

I don't mean consistently lackluster, but always lackluster in the same, obvious way.

i.e only Red States would be getting help, or hospitals in rich areas would be getting government help first with the excuse 'we ran out of money for the area', and the like. No sending help to foreign countries without demanding something in return.

I think the response is lackluster, because Trump and co are unable to admit they were wrong that COVID-19 is/was going to be a problem, or that that their efforts have not been sufficient.

You can almost compare how the situation has been handled to a small child (possibly with mental health issues) that refuses to admit their room is not tidy, and wants to go outside and play.

Compare:
Trump: Refused to admit COVID-19 was a problem, until there was no way to ignore it.
Child: Refuse to admit their room wasn't clean, until forced to look at it beside their parent.

Trump: Releases some aid, and says 'things will be back to normal soon', and wants to reopen the economy (so he wins the election by saving the economy).
Child: Picks up part of the room, and then asks if they can go outside to play (and be with their friends).

Trump: Told more is needed, resists, then releases a little more aid/does a few minor things to 'fix the problem'. Repeat
Child: Parent tells them to keep cleaning, picks up one more thing, then asks to go play. Repeat

The last action by Trump/Child is repeated until Trump/the Child is removed from the situation (i.e voted out/sent outside anyway), or until, after a far longer amount of time, and far more effort then should have been needed, the situation is finally corrected.


That's Trump and co's handling of the situation. A unruly child, that is refusing to admit they were wrong, and dragging this out as long as possible in hopes of wearing the parent down enough he can go out and play.

[loomer]

Yeah. The Onion did a reality show satire called Sex House that gave me a line that honestly seems to apply to the Trump regime's handling of most things:

'To call this place evil would imply a clarity of purpose that I do not want to attribute to anyone involved.'

[Vendetta]

For now, but as it enters the Mid West, that'll change.

A lot of red state flyover territory is liable to get away relatively unscathed.

When you've got to drive two miles to cough on your neighbour, it's hard to spread a virus.

[The Romulan Republic]

For now, but as it enters the Mid West, that'll change.

A lot of red state flyover territory is liable to get away relatively unscathed.

When you've got to drive two miles to cough on your neighbour, it's hard to spread a virus.

I wouldn't be so sure about that:

https://theguardian.com/world/2020/may/ ... land-areas

New coronavirus hotspots are emerging in Republican heartland communities across multiple states, contradicting Donald Trump’s claims that infection rates are declining across the nation.

At a fraught press briefing on Monday, the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”

Yet county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota, according to data tracking by the New York Times.

Trump’s claim is also contradicted by data used by the White House’s own pandemic taskforce to track new and emerging hotspots.

In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase. Muhlenberg county, where Central City is located, has voted Republican in every presidential election since 2004, with Trump winning 72% of votes in 2016 – the biggest ever victory for the party.

The geographical spread of new hotspots suggest that the virus is advancing quickly outside major coastal towns and cities such as New York, Newark and Seattle where infection rates are now plateauing or dipping.

Many of the new emerging hotspots, both rural and urban, are in states where governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders, or are following Trump’s advice to relax lockdown restrictions despite public health warnings about the dangers of doing so too soon.

There are more than 1.3 million cases of coronavirus in the US, including more than 81,000 deaths – by far the highest number in the world. There are only 16 states, plus Puerto Rico and Guam, where the number of new confirmed cases is on the decline.

In Nebraska, while statewide new cases have plateaued but testing remains limited, four counties which have been Republican strongholds for decades are now listed among the country’s worst hotspots. Dakota county, where about 84% of the 20,000 habitants are white, has an infection rate of 7,147 per 100,000 – the second-highest per-capita rate in the US. The governor of Nebraska, where Trump won almost 59% of the vote in 2016, is among eight who never issued statewide stay-at-home orders.

The meatpacking industry is linked to several emerging hotspots in the Texas panhandle, a semi-rural region consisting of the 26 northernmost counties, where Trump won 79.9% of the vote in 2016 and his party dominates every level of government.

Moore county has by far the highest infection rate in Texas, with 2,413 cases per 100,000 as of Tuesday. Here, the death rate is 41 per 100,000 people – 10 times higher than the state average.

Moore county is home to the giant Brazilian-owned JSB meatpacking plant, which employs mostly Hispanic and immigrant workers, many of whom are bussed in on company shuttles from nearby towns including Amarillo. The outbreak in Potter county, which is home to Amarillo, has been traced to meatpacking plants. Here, there were 975 cases per 100,000 on Tuesday – the second-worst rate in Texas and more than six times the state average.

Last week in a Facebook video, the Amarillo mayor, Ginger Nelson, said Governor Greg Abbott told her it was best for Amarillo residents to stay indoors despite his decision to ease statewide restrictions.

It hit the big coastal cities first, but its moving into Trump Country fast. Even the most rural people still have to go shopping sometimes. And it doesn't help at all that Trump's base is a) disproportionately older, and b) being actively encouraged to disregard precautions by their Dear Leader.

[Zaune]

It hit the big coastal cities first, but its moving into Trump Country fast. Even the most rural people still have to go shopping sometimes. And it doesn't help at all that Trump's base is a) disproportionately older, and b) being actively encouraged to disregard precautions by their Dear Leader.

Forgive me if my sympathy for them is somewhat limited.For crying out loud, the "intravenous disinfectant" gaffe was live on the air; even his supporters should have realised the man is clearly no longer firing on all mental cylinders after that.

I hope the next administration's house cleaning efforts find the time to charge some people with elder abuse along with all the sedition and corruption.

[Broomstick]

For now, but as it enters the Mid West, that'll change.

A lot of red state flyover territory is liable to get away relatively unscathed.

When you've got to drive two miles to cough on your neighbour, it's hard to spread a virus.

No, and no.

Sure, those people might live in houses that are separated by miles, but they still have to go to the store and most of them go to church every week, at least once a week.

[Gandalf]

Also, in a lot of smaller towns there's a lot more (for lack of a better term) centralised workplaces, like those meat plants. If a significant percentage of the town works in one place that in a major part of the local economy, it can be more troubling, far quicker. Those aren't jobs that can be done from home.

[loomer]

The idea that mere distance between homes is sufficient to curtail an outbreak would appear to be strongly contradicted by the Navajo Nation, too.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The general pattern you tend to see with small, rural communities is that, on average, their probability of having an importation event is lower (compared to larger towns or cities), but that once an importation event happens the virus will spread extremely quickly (even by its already lofty standards). These communities tend to be close-knit, old-fashioned, and insular; doctors make house calls, people congregate regularly at churches or in small main street shops, etc.

Generally speaking, the lower importation risk is not low enough to offset the higher virulence. Importation is a function of time, and even these small towns have delivery trucks that will visit from larger hubs, or have the only gas station for so-many miles around, etc.

[Jub]

These communities tend to be close-knit, old-fashioned, and insular; doctors make house calls, people congregate regularly at churches or in small main street shops, etc.

All successful measures for preventing the spread of the virus show that mass gatherings should be canceled and physical distancing enforced. That doctor should get on a video chat, that church can do a congregation-wide voice call, those main street shops can enforce customer limits and implement aggressive sanitization measures. To not do these things is to invite death into your community.

[Zaune]

All successful measures for preventing the spread of the virus show that mass gatherings should be canceled and physical distancing enforced. That doctor should get on a video chat, that church can do a congregation-wide voice call, those main street shops can enforce customer limits and implement aggressive sanitization measures. To not do these things is to invite death into your community.

With what resources? Even assuming everyone has an Internet-capable device of some sort, video conferencing is pretty high-bandwidth and there were significant parts of the US where capacity was a problem (albeit mostly due to providers refusing to upgrade) even before the plague happened, and a lot of people's devices have data caps. And where's the manpower coming to enforce "physical distancing" in a country as spread out as the US?

[Broomstick]

That doctor should get on a video chat, that church can do a congregation-wide voice call, those main street shops can enforce customer limits and implement aggressive sanitization measures. To not do these things is to invite death into your community.

A lot of rural communities in the US don't even have a doctor, but OK, sure, the medical personnel serving them should be able to video chat, but rural America is also the area most likely to NOT have high speed internet. This would also be a problem with religious services on-line. Not insurmountable, but the obstacle(s) are there.

Also, in many instance "main street shops" are gone - what they have is the "local" Walmart. Which we hope is sanitizing and imposing at least a request for social distance.

But an additional problem is that many of those rural folks see this as a "city problem" or a "black/Hispanic/Asian problem" and not a god-fearing white Christian farmer problem.

[Jub]

[/quote]

With what resources? Even assuming everyone has an Internet-capable device of some sort, video conferencing is pretty high-bandwidth and there were significant parts of the US where capacity was a problem (albeit mostly due to providers refusing to upgrade) even before the plague happened, and a lot of people's devices have data caps.

Then use a simple voice call and pray at home with your family. It's not a difficult concept.

And where's the manpower coming to enforce "physical distancing" in a country as spread out as the US?

You make it seem as if it takes a military occupation for a private company to employ protective gear to their employees and have a staff member at the door ensuring they don't have over x number of people in the store at once. Beyond that put some markers down on the floor and remind people to maintain as much distance as possible between them and other shoppers for their own safety. It's literally what we did in BC and we have some of the lowest Covid death rates anywhere...

This doesn't seem hard, people are just stupid and selfish.

-----

A lot of rural communities in the US don't even have a doctor, but OK, sure, the medical personnel serving them should be able to video chat, but rural America is also the area most likely to NOT have high speed internet.

Then chat on the phone and send pictures over LTE for things that need a visual aid. This isn't an insurmountable issue.

This would also be a problem with religious services on-line. Not insurmountable, but the obstacle(s) are there.

It's a good thing church isn't an essential service. All the churches I've seen in Vancouver are currently closed due to the no larger gatherings order we issued months ago. Bar the chruch doors if you have to but people shouldn't be gathering.

Also, in many instance "main street shops" are gone - what they have is the "local" Walmart. Which we hope is sanitizing and imposing at least a request for social distance.

You can literally issue a decree that they have to take these steps and park the local sheriff and his men at the door to enforce it. Though I doubt it would come to take if my experience here in Vancouver is anything to go by, we've had remarkably few issues with compliance even among smaller businesses and the big stores often jumped on the guidelines as they were updated.

But an additional problem is that many of those rural folks see this as a "city problem" or a "black/Hispanic/Asian problem" and not a god-fearing white Christian farmer problem.

Then their insular ignorance will be their doom. I have trouble being sad that those with the means to solve their problems choose not to for reasons of culture, religion, and tradition.

[Broomstick]

With what resources? Even assuming everyone has an Internet-capable device of some sort, video conferencing is pretty high-bandwidth and there were significant parts of the US where capacity was a problem (albeit mostly due to providers refusing to upgrade) even before the plague happened, and a lot of people's devices have data caps.

Then use a simple voice call and pray at home with your family. It's not a difficult concept.

It's not a difficult concept and yet some people lose their shit over it.

The good news is that the vast majority of religious people in the US actually ARE doing what you suggest - praying at home, using phone calls or internet tech to hold services, and so forth. The problem, as always, are the minority of covidiots and nutjobs.

And where's the manpower coming to enforce "physical distancing" in a country as spread out as the US?

You make it seem as if it takes a military occupation for a private company to employ protective gear to their employees and have a staff member at the door ensuring they don't have over x number of people in the store at once. Beyond that put some markers down on the floor and remind people to maintain as much distance as possible between them and other shoppers for their own safety. It's literally what we did in BC and we have some of the lowest Covid death rates anywhere...

This doesn't seem hard, people are just stupid and selfish.

Exactly, people are stupid and selfish.

My employer did exactly as you suggested. We have daily health checks, the company provides PPE, hand sanitizer, installed sneeze guards, hired people to do nothing all day but go around the store and clean "touch points", distancing marks on the floor, etc.

We have still had to have the occasional covidiot removed from the store by police. They start yelling about "rights" and the police remind them that the store is private property and the owners can set rules or even evict people from the premises.

On the flip side, we also have customers wanting MORE - they'll inform on both staff and other customers not wearing masks, not wearing them properly, and so on.

This would also be a problem with religious services on-line. Not insurmountable, but the obstacle(s) are there.

It's a good thing church isn't an essential service. All the churches I've seen in Vancouver are currently closed due to the no larger gatherings order we issued months ago. Bar the chruch doors if you have to but people shouldn't be gathering.

Most of the churches and other houses of worship in my area went virtual even before our state locked down, or at least had the option for those already concerned with the virus.

But, for better or worse, a lot of Americans DO see church as an "essential service". And, in rural America, it is a town hub for much more than religion, also being the social hub, aid distribution center, etc. The fucking redneck idiots can't comprehend that you can continue to run the food pantry out of the building but at the same time should not be packing them in on Sundays.

You're right, though - their idiocy may well be their downfall.

Also, in many instance "main street shops" are gone - what they have is the "local" Walmart. Which we hope is sanitizing and imposing at least a request for social distance.

You can literally issue a decree that they have to take these steps and park the local sheriff and his men at the door to enforce it.

That only works if the sheriff is willing to enforce the order. If the sheriff is also a covidiot that's a definite obstacle.

But an additional problem is that many of those rural folks see this as a "city problem" or a "black/Hispanic/Asian problem" and not a god-fearing white Christian farmer problem.

Then their insular ignorance will be their doom. I have trouble being sad that those with the means to solve their problems choose not to for reasons of culture, religion, and tradition.

Agreed.

The real tragedy are the non-covidiots they will take with them.

[Zaune]

Not only has the sheriff got to be willing to enforce the order, they have to be willing to order their deputies to risk their own lives and the lives of anyone else within about half a mile in the process, because the really militant "covidiots" have been showing up toting automatic weapons.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah. As much as on principle I want to see these idiots taken down by force before their selfish fanaticism kills both themselves and thousands more innocent people, dealing with large groups with automatic weapons is probably beyond a lot of small town police forces. This is more a job for the FBI (good luck with that, with Barr running the DOJ), or even the National Guard.

[Zaune]

Yeah. As much as on principle I want to see these idiots taken down by force before their selfish fanaticism kills both themselves and thousands more innocent people, dealing with large groups with automatic weapons is probably beyond a lot of small town police forces. This is more a job for the FBI (good luck with that, with Barr running the DOJ), or even the National Guard.

Even they'd have to think long and hard before they committed to dropping the hammer. These protests tend to happen in the downtown core, usually outside the city hall or the state capitol building and pretty much always in places where a major shootout is nearly guaranteed to lead to a lot of bystanders getting hit by stray rounds. And that's before Trump says or does something monumentally stupid when he finds out, which he almost certainly will.