About exceptionalism

During this U.S. election season, we hear more often about “American exceptionalism.” Sadly, an awful lot of Americans think it means “I’m an American, so you must make an exception for me.” And so, they decide that they don’t need to socially distance and that wearing a face-covering doesn’t apply to them. They refuse to understand that they do not have a right to impose their possible infectiousness on others. It seems that only personal hospitalization turns any of these covidiots into true believers. Alas, our health care system cannot sustain the strain caused by all the covidiots being hospitalized at once.

Remember the pandemic? It is not going away anytime soon.

So Florida, with a governor infected with slavish devotion to Trump, opened up its economy too soon according to federal standards. Now Florida, along with other similarly overeager states such as Texas and Arizona, is witnessing spikes in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. These spikes will no doubt be further boosted due to community spreading during protests – just wait a week or two for the increases to show up. The pandemic moving off the front page of the news does not mean it can be ignored. People who think there might be a “second wave” come autumn should not be surprised when it shows up much earlier, trashing plans for economic recovery.