Leadership
We’ve hit 5 million cases in the US, which is more than any other country. Aren’t we clever. The midwest is going to be swamped.
Health specialists predict a sharp increase in deaths across the region in the coming weeks that will be made significantly worse in some states by the politicians who followed Donald Trump’s lead in undermining medical advice and in questioning the value of masks.
Anthony Fauci, the president’s lead coronavirus expert, recently warned the midwest’s political leaders to follow the science.
“Some states are not doing that,” he said. “We would hope that they all now rethink what happens when you don’t adhere to that. We’ve seen it in plain sight in the southern states that surged.”
Don’t be cute. Don’t be a rebel. Don’t be a trumpy. Just listen to the medical people and wear the damn mask.
Alarmed by rising infections, Wisconsin’s governor last week declared a public health emergency and required masks to be worn indoors. But that immediately fell victim to the politics of coronavirus as at least 16 county sheriffs said they would not enforce the order.
The Florence County Sheriff’s Office told residents: “Wear a mask if you want, if you don’t want to, that is fine also”. In Oneida county, the sheriff said the governor’s order “is in violation of the constitution” while the sheriff of Racine county called the order “government overreach”.
Freedomfreedomfreedomfreedom.
The University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation has warned that the refusal of Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, to require masks in public spaces will cost 700 additional lives over the next three months. It predicted the number of coronavirus deaths at about 13 a day in Iowa by the end of October with the present policy compared to fewer than two if 95% of people used face coverings.
A small price to pay for freedomfreedomfreedomfreedomfreedomfreedom freedomfreedomfreedom.
I wonder if any of thee jurisdictions have bans on fires during extended droughts? Is that considered “government over-reach?”
They’ve simply decided that recognizing that the whole fucking country is on fire is somehow “political.”
Meanwhile, a quarter of a million bikers are descending on South Dakota. The locals aren’t happy.
Our local paper was suggesting that we could expect a surge following a large motorcycle rally in a nearby town. Residents of that town do almost all their shopping here, because…well, you gotta have stores to shop in. So if they contract anything, they will bring it here, and that town may be more mask-hostile even than our own gloomy spot on the plains.
With 30% of our faculty, and an equivalent number of students, saying they will not wear masks, and with 50% of our faculty saying they will not enforce a mask mandate, I suspect reopening our school will be disastrous. I realize there are some class that can’t be taught over the online system (I mean, yeah, welding? Construction? Not sure how online learning could handle that). I realize that, for a lot of students, adding a semester to their school time is prohibitive, especially in a school where most of our students live at or below poverty level. But it seems to me that lives should be put first.
I think I just outed myself as a non-Republican by that last statement.