Coronavirus Chronicles: The dropping shoe

By my calculations, from the first day the lockdown began in earnest and the reality of the impending pandemic became inescapable, today is Day 240. Eight months ago, I figured we would be out of the crisis by now. 

We aren't.

As I write this, an alert came over my phone that Utah's governor is holding a press conference in a little while to announce new restrictions. The state has been spiking for weeks, but in the last week, it spiked really badly -- almost 3,000 new cases on Friday. We weren't getting that many in a month back in the spring.

A combination of apathy, pandemic fatigue, politicization of the crisis, poor planning, and young people not giving a crap if they get infected has got us to this point. I can't say that if I was in my 20s I'd be as much of an asshole as the youth of today are being, but much of the latest fuel to this fire, at least locally, was people hanging out at Halloween parties. The biggest rate of spread in Utah is in the 15-35 age group. Are younger people -- no matter their political bent -- irresponsible, snowflakes, or just shitheads?

Others are to blame, of course. Many schools reopened without a solid plan to stop the spread -- or without the resources to make such plans feasible. Plenty of older people are ignoring social distancing guidelines, too. Mask usage at stores and other public places is actually pretty good in Salt Lake City, but that's not going to help for groups of people who just have to socialize or they lives would be empty and worthless. And we've seen so man parents of high schoolers enable their children to be superspreaders, posting pictures of unofficial Homecoming gatherings with a couple dozen kids, all mask-less

The election is over, and I'm so happy with the result, but I'm getting annoyed again because the boys have their high school sports seasons in progress, but those are in jeopardy when they shouldn't be. This should have been figured out by now, but we, as a people, suck. I'm pretty sure I've said that before, but we just collectively suck. Our nation was faced with a challenge, and we failed it miserably.

The crisis will get worse over the next six weeks when more people die. That puts the potentially missed sports into perspective, but others' failures are broadly impacting the pandemic. Some people won't get a normal school year or the activities that complete them. Some will suffer economically because their jobs aren't back to normal yet -- if they ever come back. Some will get sick, and some will never recover.

I just watched the governor's announcement, and there will be no high school sports for two weeks. Basketball tryouts were supposed to be tomorrow for Michael; Ben was to have a swim meet Thursday. 

The shoe is dropping. And to all those superspreaders out there, who think going to a party is more important than stopping a disease that's killing people: Be smarter. Please.

(Last paragraph edited because originally I said something much stronger to the superspreaders ...)

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