The Governors will have no choice but to shut everything down again when the second, even worse wave comes (which it will since the virus is still everywhere.)
No one should be surprised when this happens because we reopened to quickly when too many cases still occurring, coupled with people refusing to wear masks or social distance.
The smart people will keep staying at home and following all other recommendations to prevent spread. It will also give me time to prepare for when it gets even worse, while many will go back to their normal routines.
It’s only my opinion but I believe the next shut down will be stricter and longer than this one.
We have failed miserably, as a country, in dealing with the virus.
I don’t think the protest/riots it will cause states that are opening up in a thoughtful way to change how they are reopening at all. These protests/riots have nothing to do with Covid-19. If one believes that, they don’t understand why these things are happening.
States that didn’t reopen in thoughtful ways are pretty much already back to what was normal before. There will still be protest and riots in those states, too.
As to journalists, they should of course understand that being in the middle of a war zone, riot, demonstration, etc. carries with it a fair amount of risk.
They should not, however, be deliberately targeted or arrested by authorities. This kind of action against journalists is the stuff of dictatorships.
There was a WSJ editorial the other day which summed it up quite well:
“Whether the order comes from political leaders, epidemiologists or the media, you can get away with forcing the U.S. to shut down for about three months, but that’s it. Then the tides of human nature will push past the voices of authority. For better or worse, that’s just the way it is.”
There won’t be another lockdown, at least not before the election. Even after that a strict lockdown would prompt civil unrest (which is already a considerable risk from the losing side).
So it will be up to individuals to do whatever they personally consider to be “smart”. For some that may be taking a risk and behaving relatively normally, for some it may be modifying their behavior somewhat to limit risk and for others it may mean continuing to stay at home and not going out.
@privatebanker Respectfully, these protests are not about poverty or economic opportunities, but unending systemic racism. Of course, such racism can shut down economic opportunities and create generational despair, but that’s the root.
Anyone who is praising police actions during this horrendous trouble needs to take a moment and watch just a few news clips of police reactions. They are brutal and do not contain or solve any problems. They perpetuate and inflame them. On the other hand, the Camden NJ police did not attack protesters. Instead, when they arrived, they joined and marched together. That was a statement right there. Understand, the current police policies do not work, and black Americans are consistently, undeniably targeted and, guilty or not, treated more harshly with little or no impunity. This is NOT going to go away until fundamental change happens. And no police force should be praised for shutting it down without even trying to address the problem in a real way.
Agree. I don’t think the public will tolerate any more lockdowns (or SAH, SIP, whatever we want to call them). Also, if people will just take the recommended precautions (social distancing, masking when appropriate, avoiding large indoor gatherings, etc.), there should be no huge surges in infections, and no need to go back to strict lockdown.
My city is having a lot of civil unrest. D2 lives near some of the worst of it, and she said the area where she lives had a heavy police presence last night.
A Target near downtown Chicago closed early, my DD was inside it when they made the announcement. No damage to that store last night. She mentioned they raise the bridges over the river in downtown Chicago to better control the movements of rioters - as she said, not their first rodeo.
The Ferguson MO police department was damaged, as were several businesses. Including a beauty supply store that was looted in 2014 and came back. This is the thanks they get.
Really, there is such universal agreement that the Chauvin video was a call for change. The riots will delay and pervert that change, it is beyond infuriating.
In San Francisco we have a curfew, at 8 pm, starting tonight. The protests were primarily peaceful here in SF, but there was looting in the Union Square and Market Street areas.
This whole historic episode is so incredibly tragic for everyone in the US., and I can’t stop thinking about the 67 riots.
I was a little girl living in a lily white working class suburb just north of Detroit during the 67 riots. I could remember hearing the adults talking about how scared they were about the “black” riots coming to our suburb. Detroit was essentially burned to merely a shell in many parts and those burned out building hulks remained for decades.
The race relations improvements that I see from those days is that Detroit has more and more young white people returning to live in Detroit and the suburbs are not all white anymore. More people have joined the black middle class. The racial economic barriers are not as stark, although they still exist.
I am also heartened to see that so much of the protest in the present day is multi-racial. Young people have a much greater understanding of institutional racism and white privilege.
While I hate these riots, I think that more older white people need to educate themselves about the history of blackness in this country. It could give more perspective into the underlying issues that are part of these riots.
If interested, a thoughtful contemporary perspective on this is here by commentator Trevor Noah, himself a son of apartheid in South Africa:
The mayor lives in our general area and there was a car caravan protest yesterday, which lasted about an hour. It would have been the major news story and showed how a protest can be done safely and still get attention except…
Another protest was held in a town just east of the city - La Mesa - where a police officer was in a video showing a black man potentially handled too roughly (details not clear yet). The protest started peacefully but grew, spilled onto the interstate nearby, and ended at night with a few fires and some tough crowd control.
Edit - just read that there was looting in La Mesa last night - grocery, Walmart, Sally Beauty, and some banks torched.
But up in Seattle where our son lives - terrible rioting, looting, fires, curfew, weapons and potential weapons ban in a large section of downtown. It looks like a war zone, and there are videos of the looters breaking into stores and cleaning them out. The afternoon peaceful protest was overrun later by the other group. Son lives at the very northern edge of the area, safely away from where the riots were.
Hence, a second wave much worse than the first and a stricter and longer SAH than the one we just went through.
One only needs to see what is going on all over most of the country to see large minorities of people doing everything and anything they want and not following any guidelines.
Again, the virus hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still everywhere. And it is opportunistic.
Hard to see how looting the Louis Vuitton store on Rodeo Drive is a call for racial justice.
And just as one’s personal experience with COVID informs one’s attitudes, having been caught in the middle of some of the looting and vandalism and fearing for my safety in early pregnancy in '92 has hardened my heart against it forever.
Yesterday, D and her bf were walking home from a lovely, socially distancing engagement party in a park when they realized there was rioting on their block in Philly. D said she was petrified. They made it safely home and watched stores on their street looted and, later, a building a few blocks away was set on fire and the smoke smell was pretty strong in their apartment. Our family dog, who lives with them, was really struggling. Coincidentally, another D of mine lives a 20 minute walk away. They were having a birthday celebration in their backyard. They watched helicopters flying overhead and could smell smoke.
My 3rd D went out socially for the second time since SIP, meeting friends in Brooklyn at a park. They were together for hours and there was a small, moving protest that they ended up participating in and then they all stood and applauded for health care workers at 7 pm. She ubered home and was told they would be taking an alternate route due to rioters. When she arrived at her building, the front door was locked (a first) but someone was there to let her in when he saw her.
I was in near tears much of the day yesterday and, selfishly, breathed a small sigh of relief when my last D was safely home. My heart breaks for what our nation has become and for the way blacks are and have been treated. I watched too much CNN yesterday (didn’t help with the near tears bit) and appreciated the young black men that spoke about the need for change and how the violence/rioters did not represent their message. Change must come.