What happens when a scab is picked off a wound? What are we seeing on the wounded body of America that has been revealed by the uncovering caused by the coronavirus pandemic?
It may feel like wrong advice, but research shows it can be OK to pick a scab. Picking can actually help the healing process because a scab that’s on for too long increases scarring.
The open wound that is now America reveals myriad causes of our poor health as a society. And of the Earth’s growing sickness.
The worst-case coronavirus scenario is not mass death. It’s that people are coming to accept mass death — to accept that someone will die in the U.S. every 30 seconds as “just how it is.” Yet that is the conservative rationale being sold to us now.
Newly leaked projections from the Trump administration predict a second wave of COVID-19 is likely right around the corner. By June 1, the country could see 3,000 deaths a day — a new high — along with hundreds of thousands of new cases. The estimates come as parts of the country are beginning to reopen businesses and ease restrictions on distancing.
In a Fox News interview (where else?), President Donald Trump once again called for states to reopen sooner than later. At the same time, he cast aside earlier projections lauded by his own administration that predicted the U.S. would see at most 60,000 deaths by the end of August. Instead, he conceded that “we’re going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people.” This is a horrendous forecast from any perspective. But the Trump administration and its backers from conservative media to the small but aggressive “reopen” movement are trying to convince people it’s not only “normal” but worth it.
They are working to avoid a worse scenario — namely, the needless deaths of thousands of Americans — on its head by arguing that we must embrace it head on and just plow forward with reopening the country. It’s a criminally caustic idea in this moment, and it is also establishing a dangerous political precedent. It is setting Americans up to reject legitimate policy solutions on what remains the biggest issue facing humankind: the climate crisis. Our apparent inability to demand more from our leaders and each other is risking the larger catastrophe that will follow the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the narrow view of the “reopen” protesters, freedom means the government should play no role in protecting the greater good, that you don’t owe your fellow humans anything, that being able to get a Big Mac without wearing a mask is an essential expression of liberty and worth 3,000 people losing their lives. It also reveals some kind of magical thinking that you or a loved one will escape being one of the 3,000 people that will die.
It is an extension of the conservative movement that values individualism over the public good. A “reopen” protester will argue that that the government should get out of the way and allow anyone who wants to go back to work, or to the store, gym or swimming pool to do just that. Anyone who’s afraid of getting COVID-19 can just stay home.
“The reopen movement,” Brian Kahn, managing editor of Earther writes, provides the cover for “politicians to ignore the science and popular will to enact shortsighted policies — and throw up their hands when more people get sick and die. It also gives us a preview of how some people and leaders will respond to the steps necessary to address climate change, which will require similar bold actions that will upend the status quo.”
“The best available science,” Kahn continues, “tells us drawing down emissions rapidly this decade is our best shot at protecting the climate and humanity. Even then, people will still die, and we should absolutely mourn that fact. But more than that, we should be mad as hell that fossil fuel companies and pliant politicians have made that the best case scenario while also doing their damnedest to ensure we don’t even get that.”
That we must reopen the U.S. in the face of the coronavirus risks is as hollow as thinking we can do nothing about carbon emissions. The results will be the same: needless death in the service of selfishness. In the case of the climate crisis, that death will be so much more widespread, encompassing the entire biosphere that has made it possible for humanity to thrive.
John Bos lives in Shelburne Falls and writes frequently about the climate crisis. He sees the coronavirus pandemic as a prelude to the mortal global impacts of global warming. Comments are invited at john01370@gmail.com.