Introduction
This Straight, No Choices address our COVID-19 choices. We’ve focused a lot on our failures getting the fundamentals of public health implemented, both nationally and within most states. However, let’s not be so smug as to believe all problems that have and will manifest are the problems of the political right. This is not to excuse but explain and warn. We still have a long way to go, and there’s not much indication that we’ve yet begun to get there. The data points in the wrong direction, and it’ll bleed into the next respiratory season with a trampoline effect on cases.
COVID-19 Choices: Freedom
Americans treasure independence, free will and what’s left of what were our freedoms. As related to COVID-19, we all seem to have a line drawn as to where we won’t do what’s necessary to protect ourselves and the general population. It certainly is (but it’s not just) failure to honestly implement the Defense Production Act, to order a national shutdown, testing and contact tracing programs, holding rallies, persistent dishonesty about the data and reporting (I could go on…).
COVID-19 Choices: Look at Our Actions
However, there’s more that we, the people, say and do every day, and there’s things we support that make no sense if the goal is to eliminate this virus. Here are a few.
- Our youth are all over the beaches.
- People are traveling on airplanes, buses and trains.
- Schools and businesses are opening.
- Professional sports are restarting.
- We refuse to participate in contact tracing over concerns about our privacy.
- We continually speak to how we don’t take the vaccine that’s forthcoming, regardless of which the data shows and what the medical community recommends.
If you think about the demographics of these activities, you’ll realize they encompass the full political spectrum and multiple demographics. Let’s just take one example. Everyone’s been awaiting the development of a vaccine, but if upwards of 70-75% of us don’t take it, it won’t produce a desired mass effect of reducing the viral load and producing herd immunity.
Where Does This Leave Us?
All of this leads me to conclude that the challenges of COVID-19 will continue for a long time. See, if we each have a line that’s drawn, we all will ultimately contribute to the ongoing and rising level of deaths. Americans have rights and individual freedoms, and you’re expressing them with your actions. Choices have consequences. Can you be as honest about that as we’re demanding our leaders be honest about what they aren’t willing to do? Are you ok with what that will mean for the foreseeable future?
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