We’re Headed For An Upsurge In Deaths, And There’s No Valid Reason For It

Bill Gates and coronavirus masks — I don’t know who created this image, which is obviously aimed at the sorts of folks who (for reasons entirely obscure to me) imagine Bill Gates to be responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and who like to think of the refusal to wear masks as some sort of patriotic statement. I hope that he or she will forgive my borrowing it for use here.

Disturbing news, following hard on the heels of yesterday’s disturbing news:

“Utah breaks yet another daily record with 546 new confirmed COVID-19 cases: Veterans’ advocate dies with COVID-19 in facility that bears his name”

I get it. People don’t want theirs rights and their freedom taken away. I understand the anger against enforced shut-downs.

But I don’t get the notion that the coronavirus is somehow a political question. COVID-19 doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal or a conservative or a Trumpist, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or Independent.

I honestly don’t understand why it’s a political statement to refuse to voluntarily don a protective mask, why it’s considered somehow virtuous or heroic to put oneself — and, worse, to put others — in danger by violating prudent rules of social distance.

I understand that many if not most people are heartily tired of working from home, of not attending movies and going to restaurants, of foregoing parties and sports activities and concerts. I’m tired of it, too.

But it seems inevitable that, if we begin to mingle freely, if we become indifferent to the invisible killer that still surrounds us, people will die. And it’s still very possible that, if we’re sufficiently imprudent, we will overwhelm our hospitals, threaten the lives of doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers, and prolong the pain of this pandemic.

Refusing to take reasonable steps to avoid catching and spreading the coronavirus isn’t an act of heroic political defiance. It’s simply short-sighted and irresponsible. It is self-centered, and it shows lack of care or concern for others.

This should not be even remotely controversial.

Refusing to maintain social distance or to wear a mask is no more a principled stance than would be refusing to wash one’s hands.

This is absolutely not a matter of political philosophy. It’s a matter of ideologically neutral hygiene and public health.

More and more, I see large public gatherings in parks and elsewhere, as if the plague were behind us. It is not. And we deceive ourselves if we refuse to take it seriously. People will pay a price for our indifference. And those people will perhaps be the completely innocent victims of frivolous strangers or relatives who needlessly put their lives at risk.

We’re headed for an upsurge in deaths, and there’s no valid reason for it