When Ignorance and Idiocy Become Dangerous

The recent right-wing protests against COVID-19 social-distancing and shelter in home orders are a dangerous and foolhardy expression of deep ignorance regarding the pandemic.

There is, of course, a healthy dialogue to be had about how we should proceed with relaxing some restrictions as we move past the peak of the first outbreak.  We have now had social distancing orders in place for 4-6 weeks, depending on location.  Yet we are still experiencing a stubborn rate of 30k new infections daily and close to 2k deaths each day.  One can hardly describe this situation as being ‘under control’.  The best we can say is that hopefully the worst is behind us.  But the wrong next steps could make that statement false as well.

What we know is that the SARS-CoV-2 (the virus itself – the disease is COVID-19) is extremely contagious, much more so than the yearly flu.  We see clearly in several cases – Wuhan, Italy, Spain, NYC, London – how devastating an outbreak can become under normal circumstances.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that totally relaxing restrictions would not send us right back into a disastrous situation that would once again overwhelm our healthcare resources.  This would be the very height of idiocy.

Any arguments that a certain level of deaths must be accepted to save the economy ignore the fact that the full raging outbreaks go well beyond any contagion that we have experienced before and lead to many unnecessary deaths because of the breakdown of healthcare systems.  Furthermore, it is not just the elderly and the weak that are succumbing.  Many young and fit people are falling prey to this strange disease, much like the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. 

Whether restrictions can be relaxed somewhat in rural areas and areas that have less population density without impacting the overall contagion spread is unknown.  No doubt some states will be probing this question over the coming weeks.  Larger urban areas will also attempt some decrease of restrictions, but clearly this must be done very slowly and methodically, in concert with large scale testing and follow-up tracing and quarantine.

In Germany, Angela Merkel has explained these facts and the science behind them to the country, and they are beginning to experiment very cautiously.  The Germans support her caution because they understand what is at stake and why the situation is so precarious.  They have been much more successful than any other country in performing adequate testing and thereby reducing the number of fatalities.  The U.S. should look to this as a model for moving forward.  Unfortunately, we have Donald Trump instead of Angela Merkel.

Peaceful protest is a right guaranteed by our constitution and I do not question whether the current wave of protests is lawful.  And I understand that the economic effects have been painful and that people are frustrated.   But protesters need to be wary of stoking the fires of partisan divide and making this pandemic a political discussion rather than a scientific and public health one.  That can only lead to further challenges in confronting the contagion and may have the very opposite effect of further delaying what the protesters claim to represent - a return to normalcy.

Idiotic protestors, some with AR-15 rifles in provocative poses, are so completely ignorant of the details of this crisis that they would be laughable if they weren’t also a danger to our civic stability and our ability to confront the contagion.  The fact that Trump is egging on this cretinous mob is not surprising, but it is one more indication of the lack of any leadership qualities in the man who somehow has become our President.