It’s tempting to think that people ignoring the CDC guidelines and refusing to wear masks is solely a matter of partisan politics. But it isn’t. When governments open up a lot of people assume that means it’s safe to go back to normal. I saw it right here in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. It wasn’t Trump voters I saw crowding in bars and restaurants without masks or social distancing last week.
t may seem weird considering all the mistrust of government in our culture, but I think we may underestimate how much people who don’t pay attention to politics trust that when the government says the state is open for business again that this means they are safe and that’s the end of it.
This is a failure of communication. I think the businesses have to be enlisted some way and it has to be made clear that big parties are out. Walking around my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago it was clear that people were gathering in large crowds at home, drinking and hanging out. I’m sure they weren’t wearing masks indoors, which is the most important place to wear them if you’re in close quarters.
Sharing his regret on Facebook, Thomas Macias was focused on his loved ones.
“Because of my stupidity I put my mom and sisters and my family’s health in jeopardy,” the California truck driver wrote in a post his family shared with The Washington Post. He’d gone out to a party where no one wore masks, his niece Danielle Lopez said, only to learn afterward that someone knowingly attended with the novel coronavirus, apparently reasoning — erroneously — that without symptoms, it couldn’t do anyone harm.
But 51-year-old Macias was also at risk, made extra vulnerable by his diabetes and weight, Lopez said. The morning after that June 20 Facebook post, he called his mother saying he couldn’t breathe. She told him to rush to the hospital.
By 9 p.m., family say, he had died.
Perhaps, Lopez said, her uncle would not have gone out if their Southern California county had not been reopening and if people hadn’t thought the virus’s threat was easing.AD
“It was absolutely preventable,” Lopez told The Post.
Family say Macias was diligent for months about minimizing his trips outside the home, knowing his health conditions made him vulnerable. But Macias was also a social creature, they said, calling his mom every day and eager to see his loved ones.
He “made friends wherever he went,” just like his father, his uncle Ricardo Macias told The Post over Facebook messenger.
California was also starting to emerge from shutdown when Macias would have been weighing attendance at the party. Macias said he went out a couple of weeks before his June 20 Facebook post.
Riverside County, where he lived in Lake Elsinore, was approved late in May to enter Phase 2 of California’s reopening process, which meant people could head back to malls and dine at restaurants. Gyms, nail salons and more followed in June.
The coronavirus situation in Riverside, however, was worsening that month. On June 17, the Desert Sun reported, the county went on a state watch list after cases increased and hospitalizations rose 19 percent in three days. Riverside is among the 19 counties, covering more than 70 percent of California’s population, that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced this week would have to shut a large swath of businesses back down, as the state shatters its records for new known coronavirus cases reported each day.
Even before Macias’s death, Lopez said, “we thought that it was a mistake opening so soon. … There’s still no vaccine, there’s still nothing to fight against this.”
“We should not have opened to begin with,” she said.
It’s not clear how many people were at the party Macias attended in Lake Elsinore, where he lived about an hour’s drive southeast of Los Angeles. Lopez said her family heard from Macias that a friend who also attended later reached out to say everyone should get tested — because that person went despite having a coronavirus diagnosis.
I doubt that person was trying to kill anyone. But the result speaks for itself. I just don’t think people understand how bad this is, even now. And it’s terrifying.
We will be spending our holiday at home. We’ll have a nice cookout. It will be fine. I hope you all do the same. I know people are yearning to socialize. It’s human nature. But we can’t right now. We just can’t.