A couple of days ago I asked what lessons we should have learned from the COVID pandemic. Today the Washington Post tells us what lessons we did learn from the pandemic:
At least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws since 2020 that limit public health authority....Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, ordering school closures and imposing other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders, the analysis showed.
....“One day we’re going to have a really bad global crisis and a pandemic far worse than covid, and we’ll look to the government to protect us, but it’ll have its hands behind its back and a blindfold on,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. “We’ll die with our rights on — we want liberty but we don’t want protection.”
Regardless of my already cynical view of human intelligence, I'm freshly astonished every time I remember how COVID was almost instantly turned into a weapon in the culture wars. A pandemic! It's the least political emergency you can imagine. But these days we could turn a Mother's Day resolution into a culture war battle.
So instead of something normal, we learned that the pandemic was a massive deep state hoax of some kind and we should make sure to prevent future leaders from having any authority to ever respond to one. All because a lot of people found masks kind of uncomfortable. God bless America.
Most Americans were pretty good about masks and public health compliance, at least for the first year. The problem was that there was a vocal minority that immediately latched on to conspiracy theories and was outraged at the very idea that they might be expected to follow public health guidance or being inconvenienced at all - and those folks had the ears of Trump and state-level Republicans, and even state-level Democrats seemed to have very little appetite for pushing back on them.
I suppose they'll reap what they sow, if we ever do get something worse than Covid.
If Karma means anything, there will be lots of dead Republican state officials and congress people. I see dancing on their graves in the future.
Yeah, like say a pandemic that mainly attacks school-age children. I wonder where the "open the schools" crowd will be if that happens.
Masks weren't ruled out because they were uncomfortable the were ruled out because because Trump didn't want to smear his face make up
The entire goal of the rightwing is now to poke liberals in the eyes as much as possible, even if it means killing off their own supporters who apparently go laughing to their graves.
I had a cousin in Missouri who went laughing to his grave. What a waste.
I have pretty much lost hope for the future of America after witnessing the number of Americans who appear to sincerely believe absurd fairytales that the pandemic and the 'global warming hoax' are globalist plots to neutralise US sovereignty and impose a world socialist order. It's depressing on two levels: firstly that anyone could swallow such tripe when there is zero evidence to support it, and secondly that anyone believes such a globalist conspiracy could ever become a reality even if the lizard people or the Illuminati or whoever were trying. I mean 30 years after the Kyoto Protocol, the 'globalists' still haven't managed to cobble together a deal that will prevent continued growth in carbon emissions. Their capacity to take over the world is non-existent.
There was a story today that fewer Americans are going to college. There really is a powerful movement to Make America Stupid Again.
This almost certainly has to do with the ridiculous cost of tuition. Not to mention that many college graduates end up in jobs that they could have gotten right out of high school.
Really OT, but despite my hate of college, I'm glad I have that credential which was needed just to get in the door for every job I've had since then. Where I live there are no professional jobs that don't expect a college degree, even if you don't really need one to do the job. Sure, there are good paying jobs in tech that might consider you without one, but even most of those expect at least an undergraduate degree. I think the reason people aren't applying is the cost.
"I have pretty much lost hope for the future of America after witnessing the number of Americans who appear to sincerely believe absurd fairytales ..."
Maybe you will cheer up when you realize that most of these don't actualy believe the absurds, and really just decided that lying about their beliefs to justify immoral actions is a reasonable manuever
If all these poeple really believed the absurds, the North American plate would tilt over and sink by the weight of the stupidity. .
"…the North American plate would tilt over and sink by the weight of the stupidity."
Well, the sea level _is_ rising.
Education level by state,
https://i.redd.it/0yu1gmlc8qma1.png
someone should cross-reference this with anti-public health laws.
Wow. This deserves to be on the short list of charts that explain America.
Notice that even there,someone just can't use the word "Democratic?"
American Fatalism.
In America, you are free to be stupid. And with few personal economic consequences, many do make that choice.
It's what passes for excitement, I guess.
The thing that worries me is the rot seems to be spreading. I have always assumed that about a third of the human race was stupid and evil, but now I would put it closer to 50 percent. There was a guy in my circle of friends who went from a somewhat left of center guy to a raging lunatic. It got so I wouldn't go to a party if I knew he was going to be there. There was no way for me to hold back when he went off on one of his rants straight out of Fox news. I really think that Fox was the beginning of the end. Rush Limbaugh and late night radio got it started, but when Fox became the only channel on in every barber shop, YMCA, restaurant and bar people's minds began to rot.
Yes. Without the propaganda it wouldn't be happening, not like this.
It only seems like 50 percent because our political system allows a third (or less!) of the country to rule over everyone, as long as that third is efficiently spread out across states and gerrymandered districts. And when that third gains control over government, they do their best to make sure everything becomes an unholy mess so that the rest of us feel hopeless.
In most other democracies, a third of the population can’t rule over the rest of the people. You actually need an outright majority to rule.
Or a coalition of the rightwing parties, as in Israel. That's why I'm very wary of those who have suggested that the US adopt the parliamentarian style of government.
"We" did not make pandemic response a cultural issue. Republicans did. Full stop. No both sides, no "the CDC messed up too", Cletus does not have a point about overbearing leftist extremists, and by the way, leftist extremists are not in charge of the Democratic party.
Nearly all defined as how many? 29? 27? 25?
Except for a couple exceptions, the "red states" will continue their intentional and accelerating slide into third world status until they collapse and a) become fully dependent 'failed states,' and/or b) become hostile intra-national entities that individually and/or collectively hold the blue states and federal government hostage with increasing legal, political, and social aggression. How about exporters of white nationalist and radical religious terrorism? When does the first nullification get passed into red state law or executive directive? When does a coalition of red state governors issue a statement that demands federal money but refuses to follow any federal constraints on said money? Or when do national Republicans strip any funding constraints after the SCOTUS determines this to be unconstitutional, not in the original text?
They are never, not ever going to quit on their own. It's masks today, but tomorrow and tomorrow.....and Democrats make it much, much worse with 'realist' allocation of resources when funding candidates and campaigns. They are just as much a part of the Balkanization, or more, than Republicans. This is worse than people want to see or admit.
“When does the first nullification get passed into red state law or executive directive? When does a coalition of red state governors issue a statement that demands federal money but refuses to follow any federal constraints on said money?”
I believe these have already happened. Texas nullified abortion for almost a year with their bounty hunter law before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. And the states already demand Medicaid dollars without following the restriction that they open up the rolls to single people and other people making up to 125% of poverty, even though the ACA required it. (This also was blessed by the Supreme Court.)
"At least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws since 2020 that limit public health authority....Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, ordering school closures and imposing other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders, the analysis showed."
Thus assuring a generation of successive Democratic presidents.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Requiring middle/upper-class whites, especially men and from red states, to be 'bound' by regulations requiring masks as strictly as others created the problems and pandering to such persons has been the Republican M.O. since Nixon.
"But these days we could turn a Mother's Day resolution into a culture war battle."
This would be very easy to do, from either a right wing or left wing perspective. But I will resist the temptation.
Instead, I will say that my 55 year old brother, a very intelligent man but one highly prone to see conspiracies, firmly believes that the whole thing was a deep state hoax, a dry run of some kind for something something something. He bent my ear about it quite a bit at Christmas and I mostly tried to humor him while gently poking holes in his arguments.
My bro has always been slightly kooky about this kind of thing. The fact that his brand of kookiness has taken over one of our two major political parties is frightening.
All because a lot of people found masks kind of uncomfortable.
This is too facile and misses the obvious: Trump from very earliest days was concerned with the economy's effect on his chances for reelection. it was he who turned covid into a political issue.
Trump would very likely have won reelection had he resolutely decided his ticket to a second term was leading the country in a robust, science-based policy to protect the health of the American people.
What we’ve learned from the pandemic is the utter total domination of big medicine and big Pharma. There have been promising small scale trials of such cheap, simple, accessible interventions, such as zinc licenses, nasal rinse, gargling, mouthwash, etc. and yet they have never been tested in a rigorous way. It’s almost inconceivable that some combination of these approaches couldn’t have stopped the pandemic by the summer of 2020 but the big Pharma mindset and our hospitals, universities and federal health agencies only focused on expensive drugs and vaccines - a real tragedy.
Aren't you conflating the coronavirus with the flu?
". It’s almost inconceivable that some combination of these approaches couldn’t have stopped the pandemic by the summer of 2020 but.."
How does this assertion match the fact that three years later nobody in the world have figured it out?
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