When the lockdowns began in mid-March, I saw a fairly common opinion expressed.
Nobody will tolerate this for very long
Now granted, no stimulus, extended unemployment, massive education about bending curves, weeks of watching deaths rise from tens to tens of thousands etc. But it is a valid point. Science today still says a vaccine is still over a year away, no new super effective treatments have emerged and the only path to re-opening is massive test availablility — which is still months away at best.
But….
Right wingers just couldn’t wait even a few weeks. And now the idea of leaving a lockdown is tied very much to their identity as right wingers.
So yeah, we’ll get protests from now to whenever from all the idiots, very red states opening early, churches defying bans etc.
But...the majority of this country doesn’t identify with these science-denying assholes, including the governments of most of the states with the wealth and lion’s share of the population.
Business leaders see what happened to the meat plant in SD and don’t want to “be that guy” regardless of politics. It’s risky to re-open if you could just get shut down again due to the pandemic affecting your workforce and contaminating your workplace.
So now we have a new idea
Defying stay at home orders means you are a right wing fox zombie idiot.
That’ll be enough to keep the economy closed as long as it needs to be, in the majority of the country. If they hadn’t made it partisan, a lot more people might have gone stir crazy in the coming weeks and made breaking stay-at-home a much more socially acceptable move.
Tell me what you think.