Coronavirus parties? Rand Paul? Yes, we’re the land of the free. Use your liberty to stay home.
Sure, it’s fun to be an 18-year-old, high on $2 margaritas and your own sense of immortality, swearing that COVID-19 won’t kick you off the beach during spring break.
I guess it’s also fun to be Sen. Rand Paul and have easy access to a COVID-19 test, unlike millions of Americans, but then decide you don’t need to quarantine while you wait for the results to come back, so you can possibly spread the virus around the aged Senate.
Paul, as he’s fond of telling people, is a doctor. A self-licensed eye doctor, but someone more or less medicine-adjacent, who voted against the first coronavirus aid package because he was piqued that it didn’t include plans to get out of Afghanistan. What a statesman, right? The campaign commercials against him in 2022 will write themselves.
Paul is also a libertarian who, like many Americans, doesn’t want the government telling him what to do. Here in Kentucky, we also like that frontier spirit, that individuality, giving that middle finger to divine providence. How else do you explain the Kentuckian who tested positive but refused to self-quarantine or the Pulaski church that held services and now has 40 members in isolation?
And now, our President, who gives one addled press conference after another, is telling us that he wants people to get out and about by April 12 so the economy doesn’t tank further. True to form, Trump is clearly too worried about his hotels and approval ratings to look across the Atlantic at the unfolding carnage. He still insists COVID-19 is no worse than the flu, despite copious evidence otherwise.
This is not the time for either American individualism or American idiocy. Listen to Gov. Andy Beshear and every other expert in the country and if at all possible, STAY HOME until they tell us it’s safe to go out. Let the government (the local one) tell you what to do because in this case, it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’m not talking to our doctors, nurses, first responders and grocery store workers. I’m talking to the people who are still considering going on spring break because they only go to “isolated” Florida beaches, or the person who tested positive after going to a “coronavirus party,” mentioned by Beshear.
Yes, this is unprecedented and terrifying, both in terms of the possibility of illness and the rapidly shrinking economy. But staying home and closing businesses is the only way we can slow the virus enough to save our already beleaguered hospitals, cities and public services. Even more terrifying? Stories from Europe, where in Madrid, an ice rink is being used to store dead bodies, or Italy, where they’ve had to decide which COVID-19 patients are worth saving because they don’t have the resources to save them all. The worst case prediction, at least one million dead from COVID-19 in the United States because of a lack of social distancing measures, will be a greater drain on the economy than staying home for two months.
It looks as though Congress has finally reached agreement on a bailout package that will bring some relief to people, hospitals and businesses. One of the sticking points was the Democrats’ insistence that Trump’s businesses not directly benefit from it, a sad but necessary requirement.
Sadly, we’re already seeing a political divide on an issue that should only unite us. Jerry Falwell Jr. is opening Liberty University back up, a Louisiana pastor said the stay home order was politically motivated. Even our own Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer got a nice picture in the New York Times looking snazzy in a three piece suit as he told them that left-wingers were using the virus as an excuse to stop unpopular bills. Spreading disease at risk to your own life to own the libs is just not the catchiest of bumper stickers.
Thanks to all this individualism, it sounds as though things are going to get much worse before they get better. A World Health Organization official said Tuesday that the U.S. will become the next epicenter, and judging from the horrifying news out of New York City, it’s already true. Beshear talks a lot about the Greatest Generation, and this is our chance to prove ourselves just as our grandparents did in World War II. We don’t have to go to war, we only have to stay at home. That might make us the Good Enough Generation, and that’s fine. Please just think about other people and do it.
This story was originally published March 25, 2020 at 9:15 AM.
