SocraticGadfly: American Exceptionalism crumbles in the face of coronavirus

March 13, 2020

American Exceptionalism crumbles in the face of coronavirus


As school districts around the country propose closing for three weeks, with two weeks of extended spring break, followed by a week of online learning, this looks like a bunch of ex post facto actions that nobody has any idea of whether they will work that well or not, either in terms of quasi-quarantine, or in terms of addressing what they're disrupting, like school attendance.

Let's start with that, per a set of tweets of mine from last night.

First, the extended spring break? That will work out how well?
Seriously. I'm not joking.

I don't know about younger students, but teens will likely go to the movies, or what's left of malls in America if they've got wheels. Are we really going to push malls and movie theaters to close? If they don't, are we going to expect capitalist corporations like Cinemark to invest a buttload of extra money into sanitary measures?

If you're a regular reader here, you know the answer to that.

And, if you DO do that, then what next? Especially with teens of the male gender, are you prepared for a rise in petty vandalism and hoodlumism out of frustrated boredom? Or are you prepared for a bunch of teen boys and girls with three weeks straight of hang-out time? Religious Right parents, are you ready for a new outbreak of preggers daughters?

Now, about that week of online classes afterward?
And, you know the typical school district is pretty tightly strapped. Many of them don't even have enough cheap-ass Chromebooks to pull something like this off. And, here in Tex-ass? The Texas Education Agency ain't helping out, and with an every-other-year Lege, ain't in position to do so anyway. All this is going to do is further expose the "digital divide" section of American income inequality.

And, will expose plain old inequality.

Are school districts going to give poor parents who are working during school hours money for a week or two of extra child care? Doubt that one, too. Help out if they're on free, or even reduced, lunch program? You know the answer there as well.

But, this is just symptomatic of a larger disease. If you're a regular reader, you know its name. 
By the "bldg" at end, I mean things like highways and bridges, sewer and water infrastructure, and so forth. On a lot of civil engineering, America is great at building stuff.

And it's atrocious at maintaining stuff.

Sprawl, white flight, NIMBY-ism and many other things contribute. But so does a part of American Exceptionalism, that, as I said, believes American shit is built tougher than Ford tough or whatever.

It ain't.

Per the issue at hand, coronavirus and control, I was asked — rhetorically — on Twitter if I have either kids or parents at home.

No, I don't. And my own age, and vulnerability likelihood, are irrelevant in a sense anyway.

Public health, and public health policy, is about  PUBLIC issues.

N=1 stories, whether the 1 is an individual or a family, are real.

They're also anecdotes, and private anecdote.

I don't apologize for being unafraid to publicly state that some over-reaction seems to be happening, while at the same time rejecting denialism. It's my take on public health and public policy about public health.

Beyond that, re the specific issue of school closures, I also have professional knowledge to relate of multiple school districts that I know of that ramped up precautionary measures weeks ago. Maybe Houston ISD and Fort Bend ISD are that incompetent. At the same time, I know of a local community college district that's already gone the panic route. (Students in college are much more likely to be wired for a week of online classes, at least.)

In addition, we're in Tex-ass. Respiratory viruses in general lose communicability in warmer weather. Colds and other coronaviruses we already have more information on tend to recede with the seasons; most infectious disease experts believe the same is likely (though not known for sure) with COVID-19.

But, it's not just Texas. Denver is closing its schools for this time period. So is all of Ohio and all of New Mexico. Panic? Yes, given that the normal isolation time is 14 days, not 21.

That said, IF school districts had better prepared in advance, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. It might even be good to very good. But that's a counterfactual.

That's on top of New Mexico banning all public gatherings of more than 100 people. Really? You gonna arrest people in Santa Fe, Taos and elsewhere a month from now when they gather to watch Penitentes over Holy Week? Have fun with that.

But, let's move back to the big picture, per my fourth Tweet in the thread:
And it did crumble then, and is crumbling today, in something not a lot stronger than a light breeze.

We can point to Trump being a Republican as well as an idiot, and to Bush being a Republican and a semi-idiot. But, despite Obama having some now-gutted preparedness issues in place, who knows if the same hysteria, overall, wouldn't have happened when he was president? Or 50 percent of it, at least? And, state and local governments aren't Trump or Obama. And all have had months to think of something since China, and several weeks since Iran and Italy.

I haven't even touched on the bullshit of the Fed's $1.5 trillion quantitative easing plus.

That's because nobody inside the duopoly would support my idea of nationalizing the shit out of some companies.

Meanwhile, as I note in a second post, there's plenty of science and math illiteracy among the general populace, and there's even more irrationality, not because some people are idiots but because lack of rationality really is default human nature.

And, in a third post, I talk about medical lying and Chinese nationalist conspiracy-mongering, all part of Xi Jinping Thought.
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at Friday, March 13, 2020 Posted by Gadfly

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