Read on Twitter
I think left-wing shutdown enthusiasts are often implicitly comparing to a fantasy world where we can pay nearly everyone to stay home until a miracle cure. As opposed to the world I tend to think we live in—(1/8) https://twitter.com/gallagher_grant/status/1304775274911993864
one where some people are simply going to have to take risks both for economic reasons and to maintain the social fabric, which cannot actually just be transferred to Zoom, and so the best we can do is provide a combination of (1) ACCURATE information, incl. testing, and (2/8)
(2) social support systems (government $, community aid, sick leave & benefits, optional quarantine facilities, everything @sdbaral has mentioned) that help people to calibrate the risks they take based on the vulnerability of their household, not socioeconomic status. (3/8)
Don’t create a(n even worse) police state; empower people to make decisions that are right for them, with transparency plus economic justice. That’s how a democratic response should look, taking advantage of the strengths of free societies instead of aiming for Wuhan-lite. (4/8)
And the more thinly based media reports terrify healthy young professionals into feeling convinced that the virus will eat their brain, whereas (retreating to our country estates and) deconstructing whatever’s left of the public space to replace it with Netflix & Grubhub (5/8)
while denying (poorer) children an in-person education is just a character-building experiment in new ways of living, the less likely this is to happen. (6/8)
I’m probably biased because I personally find that existence repellant, even having the option—moonlighting in the other half of society through volunteer activities is one of the few things that still makes me feel human. (7/8)
But I’m astonished to see how many people, esp. people on the left who you’d expect to agree that public goods are, well, good, seem to have convinced themselves that it’s really not so bad. (8/8)
