As Pittsburgh closes down public recreation facilities to enforce social distancing during the pandemic,[1] it’s worth remembering who’s making the greater sacrifice here:
Fig. 1. Cartoon by Patrick Blower, April 6, 2020, via the Telegraph, fair use.
As I drive people around and drive to and from driving them around, I see lots of “social distancing” violations. A football game among friends here, people traveling to parties in close-knit communities there. These people don’t live well. They have hard and often dangerous jobs, if they have them at all—COVID-19 is just one more risk among many—for which they are poorly compensated. Having been told their entire lives that their lives aren’t worth a living wage, they live in cramped and dismal apartments, the sort that are “good enough” for the poor.
For such people, the lockdown is yet another form of oppression. It’s a little too easy for the rich to tell them to “stay at home.”
And it isn’t just the poor, as middle-aged fans of a Pink Floyd cover band chanted “Fuck the Police” as the latter arrived to disperse a concert[2] and a pastor in Lodi, California, refused to stop holding services, even sending the city a cease-and-desist order seeking to prevent police from further disrupting those services.[3]
I don’t buy much at Whole Foods any more, even though what I would buy is often cheaper there: Hoarders have eviscerated its usefulness. But when I stopped in at one that’s a little better stocked than the one closest to my home last evening, I was greeted by an employee who looked at her smartphone and informed me it was okay to enter.
I am seeing lines outside Home Depot, Trader Joe’s, and even Walmart. People standing six feet apart. Last time I went into Giant Eagle, it wasn’t even possible to maintain social distancing, creating a dissonance as I then attempted to maintain such social distancing, standing where I was supposed to stand, six feet back from the cashier in the checkout line. It’s all madness. Madness piled on top of madness.
Meanwhile, the day before yesterday, I said I was waiting for the number of COVID-19 fatalities in New York City alone to exceed the entire 9/11 death toll.[4]
It didn’t take long. When I looked this morning, the count stood at 3,048.[5] There are so many people to thank:
I think we might be starting to see a specific path to human extinction here with the capitalist imperative,[6] an absolute fiasco of testing,[7] and a supremacy of malfeasance.[8][9]
9/11 provided a rationale, however incorrect, for wars that have killed many more in absolute vain,[10] and a relentless Islamophobia, including that fomented by our delusional raging narcissist-in-chief.
Will we now turn on our political and economic leaders the way we did Muslims? The silence of our own hypocrisy, even as we cower in our apartments, is deafening.
- [1]WTAE, “City of Pittsburgh announces new social distancing restrictions,” March 30, 2020, https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsburgh-new-social-distancing-restrictions-coronavirus/31978041↩
- [2]Ewan Palmer, “Middle-aged crowd break COVID-19 stay-at-home order to watch Pink Floyd cover band, chant ‘f*** the police’ as officers arrive,” Newsweek, April 6, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-new-jersey-concert-rumson-1496282↩
- [3]Hailey Branson-Potts, “Pastor who refuses to cancel Sunday services because of coronavirus greeted by police,” Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-05/pastor-who-refuses-to-cancel-sunday-services-greeted-by-police↩
- [4]David Benfell, “COVID-19 may expose a path to human extinction,” Irregular Bullshit, April 4, 2020, https://disunitedstates.com/2020/04/04/covid-19-may-expose-a-path-to-human-extinction/↩
- [5]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 6, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
- [6]Citations updated, April 6, 2020: David Benfell, “The capitalist death cult,” Not Housebroken, March 27, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/27/the-capitalist-death-cult/; David Benfell, “When nothing happened next,” Not Housebroken, March 29, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/29/when-nothing-happened-next/; Mike Snider, “Work strikes at Amazon, Instacart and Whole Foods show essential workers’ safety concerns,” USA Today, March 30, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2020/03/30/coronavirus-safety-drives-strikes-amazon-instacart-and-whole-foods/5086135002/↩
- [7]David Benfell, “When ‘good’ news might not be so good,” Not Housebroken, April 5, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/02/when-good-news-might-not-be-so-good/; Emma Brown, Beth Reinhard, and Aaron C. Davis, “Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count,” Washington Post, April 5, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html; Shawn Boburg et al., “Inside the coronavirus testing failure: Alarm and dismay among the scientists who sought to help,” Washington Post, April 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/03/coronavirus-cdc-test-kits-public-health-labs/; Christopher Weaver, “Questions About Accuracy of Coronavirus Tests Sow Worry,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/questions-about-accuracy-of-coronavirus-tests-sow-worry-11585836001↩
- [8]David Benfell, “Why do Republicans seem better prepared to present proposals on coronavirus relief than Democrats?” Irregular Bullshit, March 20, 2020, https://disunitedstates.com/2020/03/20/why-do-republicans-seem-better-prepared-to-present-proposals-on-coronavirus-relief-than-democrats/; David Benfell, “While neoliberal hot air floats over gig workers’ heads, here’s the Trump administration,” Not Housebroken, March 23, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/23/while-neoliberal-hot-air-floats-over-gig-workers-heads-heres-the-trump-administration/; Adam Gaffney, “Trump sees the coronavirus as a threat to his self-interest – not to people,” Guardian, March 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/trump-sees-the-coronavirus-as-a-threat-to-his-self-interest-not-to-people; Susan B. Glasser, “A President Unequal to the Moment,” New Yorker, March 12, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/a-president-unequal-to-the-moment; Sarah Jones, “Dear Rich People: Please Stop Hoarding Things,” New York, March 30, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/things-are-bad-and-rich-people-arent-helping.html; Nick Martin, “This Is Crisis Colonization,” New Republic, March 30, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157091/crisis-colonization; Dana Milbank, “For Trump, a reckoning has come,” Washington Post, February 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/trump-reckoning-has-come/; Ashley Parker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, and Lena H. Sun, “Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis,” Washington Post, March 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-squandered-time/2020/03/07/5c47d3d0-5fcb-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html; David Remnick, “How the Coronavirus Shattered Trump’s Serene Confidence,” New Yorker, March 22, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/how-the-coronavirus-shattered-trumps-serene-confidence; Paul Waldman, “How coronavirus has deeply flummoxed conservative media,” Washington Post, February 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/how-coronavirus-has-deeply-flummuxed-conservative-media/; Kevin D. Williamson, “History Called — and Senator Burr Called His Broker,” National Review, March 20, 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/history-called-and-senator-burr-called-his-broker/↩
- [9]David Benfell, “COVID-19 may expose a path to human extinction,” Irregular Bullshit, April 4, 2020, https://disunitedstates.com/2020/04/04/covid-19-may-expose-a-path-to-human-extinction/↩
- [10]Simon Jenkins, “The US and Britain face no existential threat. So why do their wars go on?” Guardian, November 15, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/15/britain-and-us-wars-conflicts-middle-east; Dion Nissenbaum and Ehsanullah Amiri, “U.S., Taliban Sign Deal Meant to End America’s Longest War,” Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-taliban-set-to-sign-deal-meant-to-end-america-s-longest-war-11582977729; Craig Whitlock, “At war with the truth,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/; Craig Whitlock, “Built to fail,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-nation-building/; Craig Whitlock, “Consumed by corruption,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-corruption-government/; Craig Whitlock, “Overwhelmed by opium,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-opium-poppy-production/; Craig Whitlock, “Stranded without a strategy,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-strategy/; Craig Whitlock, “Unguarded nation,” Washington Post, December 9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-army-police/↩
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