Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:43 pm
As this site wrote yesterday, we all have COVID fatigue, progressives every bit as much as MAGAs. The difference is that progressives are willing to do everything medically advised and follow most social protocols. The word “most” is used because if we’re being honest, “most” progressives who are vaxxed, boosted, and all, can often “forget” the mask in certain situations, or sacrifice social distancing to go to the game. Most, anyway.
Of course, as always, the MAGAs are unwilling to do anything. And that’s a problem because there is now a real fear that a variant is coming that may as well be a new virus, Omicron, and – though Dr. Anthony Fauci says it’s too early to talk lockdowns, the fact that he didn’t rule it out, the fact that the subject came up, and the fact that Fauci also said it’s best to prepare for the worst, is telling. He knows he’s polarizing, saying it’s best to prepare for the worst means he’s made a calculated decision that it’s better to risk more polarization than take a “wait and see, be cautious” approach.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says it's “really too early to say†whether Americans can expect new lockdowns or mandates to combat omicron variant.
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“We just really need to, as I've said so often, prepare for the worst." https://t.co/E0fMRghHKQ pic.twitter.com/T3uk9MKsC1
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 28, 2021
New lockdowns. Prepare for the worst. Yes, it is too early to say. But there may come a point…
If President Joe Biden calls for a national lockdown and it is absolutely needed, it is almost impossible to imagine a scenario where the MAGAs comply with the law. They did not comply with lockdowns even when Donald Trump “sort of” ordered them. It is so bad, that it is almost impossible to imagine law enforcement, in some areas, enforcing the law. Is DeSantis going to allow any Florida law enforcement official to be used to enforce a national order under President Biden?
Anytime a society finds itself in a situation where the law, no matter the source of the edict or code, whether it is national, state, county, city, whenever the law is ignored, that society is in anarchy even if all else appears normal.
Combine anarchy with an even more contagious, more dangerous, and perhaps semi-vaccine resistant contagion, and Dr. Fauci’s idea of “the worst” isn’t even the worst. There is a “worst case scenario” from a healthcare point of view (Fauci’s) and there is a “worst case scenario” from our democratic republic point of view and it is not at all obvious which is more dangerous or which might lead to more deaths.
During the worst of the initial wave and the worst of the delta wave, we saw our medical system break. During delta over the summer, Mississippi called its healthcare delivery infrastructure a failed state. Idaho went to triage-type of care. The new variant is more contagious and, seemingly, at least as severe as delta. If and when the new variant arrives, it would near defy logic if we did not see an identical, or worse, impact on our healthcare infrastructure. “Failed.”
But again, imagine a scenario so dangerous that President Biden is calling for month-long national lockdowns and one can imagine failed “states,” not just failed healthcare systems, but simple blatant, total, disregard for laws and orders put in place to protect society.
Anarchy. And to make it worse, even if society gets through the most dangerous wave and things come back to what feels like normal on the other side, any “successful” period in which the federal law is ignored, the president is defied, makes the next one that much easier to justify, and so on, and so on.
Perhaps all of this is an overreaction. But it is not hard, at all, to imagine scenarios where we are near underreacting to a danger of the type we’ve never really faced.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.