In a way, the surge in COVID cases in the US is not unique. Most of the Western world is seeing a similar spike after a relatively sedate late summer/early fall period, and so here we are, hanging out with the cool kids, bragging about how little we studied for today’s test.
In another, more accurate way, the surge in COVID cases in the US is absolutely unique, and horrifying, and a testament to the many vampires which we have eagerly invited into our homes and lives, telling startled onlookers that it’s okay, they’re not really vampires, and even if they were they’re mostly only here to kill Grandpa anyway.
We have prioritized the economy over human lives and we will end up with neither. We have allowed absurd anti-science claims about masks not working or masks making things worse or COVID just basically being the flu or 1,000 other ones to propagate almost unchecked with the thought that it would all get sorted out in the marketplace of ideas.
The thing about the marketplaces is, though, if you buy a box of cake mix that (unbeknownst to you) has insect eggs in it, well, now you’ve got insects which never should have come into your house in the first place. But here they are, bothering you and eating your food and eating your walls and reproducing. They hitched a ride into your life through the marketplace, and now you have to deal with them forever, and that’s just how things are.
The marketplace of ideas is no different. Conspiracy theories get out into the world, and people start believing them. You can debunk them at the source — you can root out the insect nest at the cake mix factory — but that won’t help the person who’s already brought the box home, and opened it, and watched with horror as these invaders colonized a perfectly nice mid-century modern kitchen and made it, at least in part, irrevocably theirs.
It is nice that Facebook and Twitter (and other social networks too, I assume, thuogh Friendster has been suspiciously quiet on this) have started to fact check dangerously erroneous statements, but it’s not enough. It just can’t be, because the boxes are out of the building, and yes I am sticking with this metaphor into a third paragraph because it’s too late now to switch to closing the barn door after the horse got out.
But it’s not just social media that’s to blame here. State governments have their share of lumps to take too — South Dakota allowing the Sturgis motorcycle rally to go on was an act of criminal negligence that has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of cases by itself — but it’s really the feds who are to blame.
The best answer we have for what to do is simple: pay people to stay home. States, even rich states with large rainy day funds (as of March 1, at least) like California, just don’t have the money to do that. States also can’t go into debt like the federal government can. States need to receive money in grants so they can give it out to people. People will then continue to buy things, if in lesser numbers than before. The economy will be hobbled, but it will not break. Some businesses will stop existing, which is sad, but the owners will likely be able to pick themselves up and try again, if they want.
Paying people to stay home is what allowed Western Europe to get a handle on things in a way that we never did. It is not a magic bullet that will last forever — you can see their numbers are rising at the moment — but if we had done that in April or May, then we would certainly have tens of thousands of people who didn’t die, and probably into the hundreds of thousands.
But we didn’t. Some of that is a lack of political will, some of it is rank incompetence from the White House, and some of it is an individualistic American culture. If my choices cause someone else to get hurt in ways that were repeatedly and clearly explained to me, then that person getting hurt is my fault. But a lot of the country doesn’t believe that here, because accepting responsibility is just another term for limiting freedom, and we love our freedom.
We love our freedom to do whatever we want, and if that means someone else can also do whatever they want, so be it, because cracking down on bugs in cake mix (they’re back!!!) means someday someone could crack down on me not wearing a mask when I go to the store, obviously an unacceptable infringement on my liberty.
We love our freedom of speech, because it means I can say whatever I want, like, “Face masks cause tuberculosis,” and if you say, “That’s stupid and wrong,” then that’s censorship, which is against the First Amendment. But if, after hearing that, I say, “No, YOU suck and also you’re a pedophile,” then that’s free speech again.
And we love our freedom to kill. 162,000 new cases of COVID in America yesterday, and only now is South Dakota issuing an order to wear masks. The horse is out of the barn (Audience: “Boo!”) and it’s brought a whole lot of boxes of cake mix with it (Audience: wild hooting and hollering). Tomorrow it will be better to have a face mask mandate than to not have it, but it would have been better than that yesterday, and it would have been way better six months ago.
But we couldn’t do that, because we cherish our freedom to go out and die, or to stay home and die because someone else who went out came over, or to stay home and die because someone at the store sneezed. We can’t let anything take that away, and we’ll believe the first person who casts our choice as the moral one, no matter how ludicrous or unsupported by evidence the claims.
America has spent decades digging itself a hole from which we don’t have to see inconvenient facts. Even if we are, for the moment, digging somewhat more slowly, well, that’s still no solution. We still need to get out of the hole.