Name: America Is on a Death March
Brand: gq.com
SKU: gq-com-29
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

America Is on a Death March

preview

Even as our television screens light up with armed, Confederate-flag-waving protestors raging against the tyranny of paper face masks and standing at moderate distances from their fellow countrymen, Americans, by substantial majorities, oppose lifting social-distancing measures.In a new , well over 70 percent of us oppose reopening gyms, dine-in restaurants, and movie theaters, while more than 60 percent are against flinging open the doors at barbershops, nail salons, and retail shops. This is no shock. It replicates that a wide majority of Americans—81 percent in the case of a —do not support ending social distancing measures if it will allow the virus to spread, and are concerned about doing so too soon.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the newly popular director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly warned against premature easing of social-distancing restrictions, local leaders that “when you pull back mitigation, you’re going to start seeing cases crop up,” and if infections “spill over into the general community...you’re really going to see the sharp peak" which is "going to take a while to get it back down.” A new study by the at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia shows that even a few more weeks of social distancing could reduce cases by the hundreds of thousands.But nevermind widespread public opinion. Public health expertise be damned. A number of American politicians, aligning with of , are going their own way—and the rest of us are just along for the ride. Tens of thousands of us won't make it.In Missouri, governor Mike Parson says are a go as of this week. In Tennessee, governor Bill Lee gave tattoo parlors and bowling alleys the all clear. In Indiana, governor Eric Holcomb is allowing worshippers to file into Sunday church service. Malls have opened in Georgia, where , and governor Brian Kemp overruled the of on a more rigorous, localized approach. In all, 30 states are reopening.The timing couldn’t be worse.While have managed to get a tenuous hold on the outbreak with aggressive public health measures, America’s confirmed coronavirus cases are growing between . In some former hot spots, like New York and Seattle, new cases are trending downwards, according to the New York Times, and governors have taken a more cautious course. But there are also 21 states in which new cases are actually , and ten of them are nonetheless: Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina. In other countries, they’ve waited for a steady pattern of seriously decreasing cases before reopening. And in still others, they’ve contained the virus from a massive community spread by the proven epidemiological trio of widespread testing, contact tracing, and targeted quarantining, which you can only do once cases are down to or starting at a manageable level. We already know what unmitigated spread looks like: In places the novel coronavirus has been given an opening—in subway and bus systems, grocery stores, nursing homes, and prisons—it has swarmed its victims. America’s foolhardy reopening is a forced death march of an unwilling public by a few barbarous politicians.Many aren’t following the guidance of their trigger-happy governors. After Kemp caught flak for his blind cliff jump on reopening, the owners of 120 Georgia restaurants took out a in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution saying that it would be best to stay closed. But other operators, some without a social safety net, are taking their chances. All it takes is one pre-symptomatic super spreader visiting a shoe store for things to explode into grocery stores and homes where other unwitting, responsible citizens get exposed.America wasn’t the only country which rashly presumed that a deadly virus that put a province of 11 million into lockdown wouldn’t reach its shores. Bars and restaurants in Italy, France, and Spain were filled even after coronavirus touched down—but the U.S. is in its partial measures since. The lockdowns in those countries were much more stringent, with even food-mad France and Italy shutting down restaurants. Italy is only now allowing take out, not dine-in like Tennessee and Texas, where cases are still ticking up. for Germany, France, Spain, and Italy are curving down. Countries that acted earlier and more resolutely are enjoying the freedoms that we yearn for—without risking gratuitous death. Restaurants and factories never closed in , which had its first coronavirus case the same day as the U.S. but kept deaths down to 255 with a rapid, science-led response, and now Americans will watch its on ESPN. The U.S. was tragically slow to act, irresponsibly loose on restrictions, and now quick to completely reopen. For our continued delusion, America is unique among rich countries in our exploding death rate.Much about this deadly new virus is mysterious and revealing itself week by week: the , the among the young and healthy, the severity of a . What is most certainly true is that the White House keeps attempting to impose its own arbitrary end date on a highly contagious virus. It has continued to lowball death toll predictions, just as it has underestimated the coronavirus since its emergence on the world stage in January. Just two weeks after Trump claimed that the death count would be around , the U.S. passed . Ignoring actual epidemiologists, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett created a comical “” predicting that deaths would somehow to zero by May 15.It’s not like the White House wasn’t Most recently, an internal Trump projected a range of pandemic outcomes: Our daily death toll could reach 3,000 or even 10,000 per day by early June, depending on how things play out, up from about 1,000 daily today. To date, Australia has had only 97 total deaths and Taiwan has had just 6. You could compare the death toll to other American tragedies. We are currently at 23 9/11s, and could be fast approaching the 116,000 American casualties of World War I, many of which were due to the Spanish influenza. But despite this morbid warning, the Trump administration has given up, telling members of its coronavirus task force that it would soon the operation, even after failing to kick up the to manufacture desperately needed PPE for our healthcare workers or enact widespread testing.In the case of a pandemic, our fates are yoked to our communities, and millions of Americans are being dragged along unwillingly: policy based on the radical, ignorant few instead of the many. The doctors, nurses, and janitors fighting to contain this epidemic will likely be more overwhelmed, and susceptible to die. Grocery store and delivery workers endeavoring to meet our basic needs will be even more vulnerable with greater spread.Even more stultifying is that all of this is for naught: A study of the 1918 pandemic by three renowned economists found that cities that acted had stronger economic recoveries than those that didn’t. While the early 20th-century financial system was quite different from ours today, it’s not difficult to see how would spurn more fear and lockdowns, prolonging stagnation here and around the world. What recovery can possibly rise in the midst of ballooning annihilation. Viruses, after all, do not respond to bluster or political might; they only take advantage of them. America is undoubtedly making a mass human sacrifice to the god of wishful thinking. What remains unseen is exactly how many thousands of lives we will have to watch slip away unnecessarily.They’d come to New Zealand’s Whakaari / White Island, a rugged fantasyland and active volcano, for stunning selfies and the thrill of danger. Then the worst-case scenario happened.

Even as our television screens light up with armed, Confederate-flag-waving protestors raging against the tyranny of paper face masks and standing at moderate distances from their fellow countrymen, Americans, by substantial majorities, oppose lifting social-distancing measures.In a new , well over 70 percent of us oppose reopening gyms, dine-in restaurants, and movie theaters, while more than 60 percent are against flinging open the doors at barbershops, nail salons, and retail shops. This is no shock. It replicates that a wide majority of Americans—81 percent in the case of a —do not...

America Is on a Death March

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS