“The president’s right, we have turned the corner — turned for the worse,” said Terrell Means. Rural Lowndes County, Ala. has the highest rate of coronavirus infections in the state. Means is the county coroner. Masks never caught on there, the Washington Post reports, on the day U.S. deaths from COVID-19 topped 250,000.
The nation has turned another corner too. We have gone from can-do to won’t-do.
The outgoing president won’t concede (or do his job). Many Americans won’t wear masks; they won’t stay home. The Mitch McConnell-led U.S. Senate won’t approve a new Covid-19 relief package for Americans suffering under nearly a year of death and economic ruin.
One week ahead of Thanksgiving 2020 is a pretty schizoid time. The outgoing president and his base are in denial that he lost reelection (by twice the popular vote margin of 2016). Hospitals are overwhelmed as the virus spreads unchecked:
“We have had one million cases documented over the past week, our rate of rise is higher than it even was in the summer, we have hospitalizations going up 25% week over week,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, told CNN. “There are so many more cases that we have, that deaths are going up.”
Technology may yet be our savior. News drops daily of effective vaccines in testing. We watched our satellite TVs this week as the latest SpaceX Dragon spacecraft delivered a new team of scientists to the International Space Station.
Yet many of our fellow Americans won’t dance with the one that brought them. They will believe ever wilder conspiracy theories. They will put their families and communities at risk. They won’t believe facts. Or math.
They will “support our troops” with slogans and flag-waving. They won’t make similar sacrifices themselves.
Because freedom. Because freedom is just another empty slogan. Not for what we will do, but for what we won’t do.
Amber Elliott, a county health director in Missouri, expressed her frustrations to the Washington Post:
We hired 10 contact tracers to track the spread, starting in August, but the real problem we keep running into is community cooperation. We call everyone that’s had a positive test and say: “Hey, this is your local health department. We’re trying to interrupt disease transmission, and we’d love your help.” It’s nothing new. We do the same thing for measles, mumps, and tick-borne diseases, and I’d say 99 percent of the time before covid, people were receptive. They wanted to stop an outbreak, but now it’s all politicized. Every time you get on the phone, you’re hoping you don’t get cussed at. Probably half of the people we call are skeptical or combative. They refuse to talk. They deny their own positive test results. They hang up. They say they’re going to hire a lawyer. They give you fake people they’ve spent time with and fake numbers. They lie and tell you they’re quarantining alone at home, but then in the background you can hear the beeping of a scanner at Walmart.
I’ve stayed up a lot of nights trying to understand where this whole disconnect comes from. I love living in this county. I know in my heart these are good people, but it’s like we’re living on different planets. I have people in my own family who believe covid is a conspiracy and our doctors are getting paid off. I’ve done press conferences and dozens of Facebook Live videos to talk about the real science. Even with all the other failures happening, that’s the one thing we should be celebrating: better treatments, nurses and doctors on the front lines, promising news about vaccines. But the more I talk about the facts, the more it seems to put a target on my back.
“We’re tracking your movements.” “Don’t do something you’ll regret.” “We’ll protest at your house.”
It’s as if much of the country has turned “Dirty Dozen.” All these rugged individuals won’t work as a team. Every man for himself doesn’t cut it just now. What will it take? Cutting off everyone’s supply of hot water?
After the scene above, Marvin sees a bright side to the “mutiny.” His crew of misfits and convicts began seeing they were all in it together and started behaving like it.
Major John Reisman : Remember what I was saying last night about 12 rugged individualists? You heard them. It was ‘We ain’t gonna do this’ and ‘We ain’t gonna do that’ When I asked them to step forward, even Posey joined. I’ll bet you he’s been shaving in cold water since he was a kid. Boy, do I love that Franko.
We could use a Lee Marvin about now.