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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCOVID Nightmare: Right-Wingers Demonize Those Who Stay Home
Politics 5/02/20 5:00 am Read time: 3 minutes
The right is about to demonize anyone who has okay odds of surviving Russian Roulette with the virus but decides not to take the chance.
By Steve M.
Last Thursday, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story about Wuhan, where normal life is starting up again, if you stretch the definition of "normal."
Every workday at Lenovos tablet and phone factory on the outskirts of Wuhan, arriving employees report to a supervisor for the first of at least four temperature checks. The results are fed into a data collection system designed by staff. Anyone above 37.3C (99.1F) is automatically flagged, triggering an investigation by an in-house anti-virus task force.
... Before returning to the site, staff members had to be tested both for the virus and for antibodies that indicate past illness, and they had to wait for their results in isolation at a dedicated dormitory. Once cleared, they returned to work to find the capacity of meeting rooms built for six reduced to three and the formerly communal cafeteria tables partitioned off by vertical barriers covered in reminders to avoid conversation. Signs everywhere indicate when areas were last disinfected, and robots are deployed wherever possible to transport supplies, so as to reduce the number of people moving from place to place. Elevators, too, are an artifact of the Before Times; everyone now has to take the stairs, keeping their distance from others all the way.
You can call this totalitarian or dystopian, but if you want to stop transmission of the virus until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, you need to do this, or have an alternative that works as well.
So with all this going on, at workplaces and elsewhere, do people feel safe in public? No.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/covid-nightmare-right-wingers
-snip-
But inasmuch as citizens can return to living as they did before January, its not clear, after what theyve endured, that they really want to. Shopping malls and department stores are open again, but largely empty. The same is true of restaurants; people are ordering in instead. The subway is quiet, but autos are selling: If being stuck in traffic is annoying, at least its socially distanced.
Angry Fox-addled protestors in Michigan and elsewhere may have no fear of the virus, but normal people do, especially if they're older. The president and the plutocrats want the economy opened, and in much of America they'll get their wish, even though we're still experiencing more than 2,000 deaths a day from COVID-19, at a time when the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted we'd be at 1,266.
So the right can force the economy open, but many people won't venture out to participate.
What happens then? The anti-lockdown propagandists will begin to say that anyone who's reluctant to shop is a cowardly liberal who wants America to fail. On the left, we're used to being called enemies of the people. But they're about to start demonizing the healthy-but-frightened elderly, as well as people with small children who worry about being lost to them for weeks in intensive care, or worse. They're about to demonize anyone who has okay odds of surviving Russian Roulette with the virus but decides not to take the chance.
Shopping will be patriotism. Legitimate fear will be treason. They're not messing around.
Every ordinary citizen who endorses this is a moral monster.
Cobalt Violet
(9,905 posts)It can't go unchecked. They're putting all of us in danger. Our hospitals will be too full. They're going to drag this out for a decade.
Pantagruel
(2,580 posts)The term "moral monster" is woefully inadequate.
totodeinhere
(13,058 posts)asymptomatic it is likely that some carriers will slip through those tests.
SWBTATTReg
(22,114 posts)opened up, contrary to good medical advice. Like you said, sure you can get things opened back up, but who's going to come?
Any businesses that open up despite advice not to, will incur my wrath and ire in that they'll never see a dime from me or mine. So go ahead, open up, despite advice not to.
Anybody mouthing off that things should be opened up (the 'protesters', representing only 10% of us), will find out that (1) CV is still out there (2) businesses can't find workers or their owners don't want to open.
No one can force you to spend money out of your own purse(s) or wallet(s). Remember that. Screw these thugs that say otherwise. They are acting on the behalf of an addled so called president, who saw his reelection prospects go sailing out the door, with his dismal and pathetic response to the CV epidemic.
Eyeball_Kid
(7,431 posts)In normal times, consumerism, or spending money for goods and services, is an optional exercise. The way that money flows is a function of the "market" to sell to the public things that they don't necessarily need.
We are now, as a nation, re-evaluating that equation. What we need is safety from disease and death. And that's also want we want. What we don't want is the kind of spending that exposes ourselves to disease and death. So... what is INEVITABLE is that our consumer-driven economy is in a natural state of collapse. We are now spending on what's essential, not what's whimsical or desirable. Our spending, as a society, is now driven by the factors that require subsistence.
The hierarchy of wealth in the country is in extreme danger of collapse as well. All of that money flowing to the top has dropped to a trickle. So the value of investing in stocks, hedge funds, bonds, and the rest WILL shrink in importance. Right now, the stock market and other financial markets are being kept at artificially high values, but they, too, will collapse. And they'll collapse before the next election.
This has to be seen as a natural function of a global pandemic. The wealthy are in abject denial, but reality will persist. When the wealthy class can no longer pretend, all of us will be in better condition. The wealthy can no longer increase their wealth in familiar ways, and may not be able to do so for a decade or so to come, if at all. The power of the virus is analogous to the power of nature. We must adapt. In the biological realm, the degree to which an organism/species adapts is a measure of INTELLIGENCE. The virus is challenging our intelligence.
jimfields33
(15,787 posts)Jails, factories and nursing homes. We need to focus on why that is.
Crunchy Frog
(26,579 posts)jimfields33
(15,787 posts)Crunchy Frog
(26,579 posts)roamer65
(36,745 posts)Its a wonderful way to fuck over a MAGAt.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)They can demonize the rest of us all they want. We'll still be alive.
tanyev
(42,552 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)matt819
(10,749 posts)Every single fucking thing is now a left/right issue.
Wearing masks, wearing gloves, supporting health care workers, staying home, caring for your community, survival - These are apparently liberal notions.
Think about it. This is what the right is demanding: Having the right to become infected with a deadly virus, carrying signs with Nazi slogans, spitting into the faces of people wearing masks, mocking health care workers, and demanding to get tattoos.
And still, 40+% of those polled think this is just a dandy state of affairs.
jimfields33
(15,787 posts)Conservatives want the economy back. Liberals want people to live. Different priorities. Ours are better.
Timewas
(2,193 posts)America has in fact already failed... The staying at home crowd that stayed at home rather than vote did it...
dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)to a deadly disease I don't GAF what they think.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)We'll see if the major media outlets can exercise a little discipline (for once) and ignore these yammering dolts who represent a very small minority of the populace.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,853 posts)... when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!