My parents are 87 and 88 years old. They haven’t seen their grandchildren since March. This is only partly through choice, as we’re not allowed to visit their assisted living community and they face a rigorous and lengthy quarantine if they leave the premises. In any case, the soccer and baseball games they often attend were cancelled in the spring and there’s no sign of them resuming any time soon. The precautions are worth it though. Many of the retirement and nursing homes around where I live in Pennsylvania have been ravaged by COVID-19, but my parents’ community has so far managed to keep the virus out.
Still, this isn’t a great situation for us, as basic actuarial tables say my son and parents only have a limited amount of time left with each other. This isn’t time that we can get back. And yet, how would we feel if our desire to be together resulted in an outbreak in their community that resulted in hospitalizations and deaths? It’s not really a difficult choice for us stay apart. It’s clearly the responsible thing to do, and we all understand this.
I know that part of our calculation is related to our perception of risk. The Mid-Atlantic has been the hardest hit region of the country. Still, the principles involved hold just as true in areas where the immediate risk is lower. With no testing available and asymptomatic carriers, I have no idea if I’m infectious and so I can’t in good conscience walk into a retirement home. If school were in session, I’d never know if my son was carrying the virus home and putting his asthmatic mother at mortal risk. I don’t enjoy this situation, but I know I have to somehow endure and manage it.
That’s what I think about when I read stuff like this:
Rashell Collins Bridle, a 42-year-old mother of five who also lives in Nederland, [Texas] and makes her living selling items on eBay, said a minister she knew had died after contracting the virus. Even so, she said she and her friends were more focused on freedom than on health.
“I guess other people expect us to set our futures on fire to keep their fear warm,” she said. “I think that’s incredibly selfish — if you’re that fearful, then just stay home.”
…On the first weekend that Texas lifted the stay-at-home orders, Ms. Bridle took her family to a state park on the Gulf of Mexico. She said American flags were flying from many cars and trucks on the road “as if it were the Fourth of July.”
She said that if schools open with hefty restrictions on recess or how far desks must be spaced together, she will instead place her daughter in a Christian home school co-op. And if there is another stay-at-home order this year?
“We probably won’t stand for that again,” she said. “I myself won’t comply. I will never comply with anything else like this ever.”
I’ll admit that I’m a bit fearful, and more so than I’d likely be if I lived in Nederland, Texas. But my decision to abide by stay-at-home orders and the precautionary guidance of health professionals is driven much more by my sense of civic responsibility than any worry for myself.
What especially bothers me about Ms. Bridle’s behavior is that people who act like her make it less likely that I’ll be able to safely resume normal activities in the near future. She says that she’s defending freedom, but I don’t feel very free. My parents don’t feel free. My wife and my son don’t feel free. Pre-vaccine, the only thing that will change that is if the infection rate drops to a level where a newly infected person spreads the disease to an average of less than one other person. Everyone who fails to stay-at-home or take the recommended precautions delays the date by which we’ll reach that point. And that means one less day my son and parents will get to be together.
I’m only using my personal example here to make this more tangible for folks who might not immediately get it, but my concern is not at all just for how this affects my family. You can multiply my situation a couple hundred million times and get a better picture of why Ms. Bridle’s position is unsupportable.
It’s ironic that she says her response to schools taking precautions will be to keep her kids at home. I guess, whatever it takes to get her to do the right thing, right?
Trump/GOP/Christian Right are making this a culture war, the lady has picked her side.
Rashell Bridle’s attitude is not inherent, it is derived – from TV, from Facebook, from church, from socializing with people like her.
Those of us who are seniors are especially vulnerable to the stupidity of others. I have been self quarantining for twelve weeks. I walk a little in my neighborhood, being careful to keep distance, and of course I wear a mask. I live in a fairly busy neighborhood in central DC. As more and more people disregard the necessary precautions, it will be more dangerous for me to get out and walk. That curtails my freedom, though I am doing everything I should be doing to comply and keep the virus from spreading.
My feelings toward all the Rashell Bridles out there is pretty much the same as my general feelings for the last four years; a mixture of anger, disgust, revulsion, and a tinge of hatred toward all of those who have so wholeheartedly embraced all of the worst aspects of humanity, at the encouragement and behest of the man sitting in the Oval Office. Like you, I have parents in their 80’s. They live in their own home, and I do see them, as there are certain things that they need done for them which they are just not physically capable of doing. But my visits are short, and once I take care of things I don’t linger.
My dad, brother, nephew, and I have had a two week trip booked to Alaska for August. We arranged everything back in January. My dad has been several times and this was to be his last trip, and we were looking forward to making it a good memory. My nephew is dad’s “Golden Grandchild”, as we like to call him, and dad being able to do a final trip and share it with him was going to make it special. Needless to say, the thought of getting on an airplane with my 85 year old dad is more than a bit concerning. Dad texts me almost every day with some new snippet of news out of Alaska about how restrictions are being lifted. Now through his daily consumption of conservative media, my dad has slowly evolved from being concerned about the pandemic to believing that it is not really serious, unless you’re in a nursing home, and that it’s all just a plot by Democrats and Deep State operatives to take away our freedoms and deprive us of our liberty. My nephew and I had a talk with dad a couple of days ago and told him that even though things are “opening up”, there is a very high likelihood that things are going to be much worse by the time we get to August, and if that is the case then we think there is nothing left to do but pull the plug on this whole trip. The idea of having to do that disappoints and saddens me more than I can express in words. And the reality is, if we end up cancelling this trip it will be due largely to the Rashell Bridles of the world.
I have enough concerns as it is, even if we were all doing the necessary things to tamp down this pandemic, But every day, I see people acting as if nothing at all is happening. I guess for most of them, nothing is really happening. We have had less than 400 confirmed cases in our county. The only “outbreak” has been at a nursing home where 55 people tested positive, 16 of those were workers, and those workers were all asymptomatic.
I find myself walking around now with a constantly suppressed rage as I watch the ignorance and arrogance of so many people in our community. My dad is a member of the local Eagles fraternity, and when it was open he was in there at least once every day. It was his community of friends and kind of the center of his social life. They just opened up last week and my cousin, who manages the place, was grumbling to dad because even though they had been open for nearly a week, no one was showing up. The membership there skews largely older white men, and I have to say that I am surprised that so many are reluctant to come into the place, as everyone was bitching up a storm when they had to close down. Maybe in the secret places in their minds they are a bit more fearful than they let on when they were all complaining about the stifling of their “freedoms”, and seeming to want so badly to do nothing more than put a thumb in the eye of the evil government overlords by resisting the shutdowns and restrictions which were put in place back in March.
As I find myself preparing to end my work from home status and go back into my office on June 1, I can’t help but wonder what awaits us we careen into this summer of unrest and rebellion by so many people. In my mind, I can’t help but believe that things are going to get much worse before we even stand a chance at seeing things begin to improve. It seems more obvious every day that we are making the conscious decision to play Russian Roulette with a virus that can make up its own rules as we go along. That is the definition of a no-win situation.
This weekend I had a Facebook exchange with a guy who says he won’t wear a mask “because he knows he has an immune system.” When I explained the mask protects others, not him, he said “you can wear one if you want. I’m not,” which is basically saying “it’s my right to spray my germs everywhere and if you get sick and die that’s tough titty.”
So given that THAT is the attitude, I hope the stupid Rashell Collins Bridle cow gets it, gives it to her parents, and then loses the parents on the vent.
Yes, that’s a cruel thing to hope for, but it’s the only way these stupid motherfuckers learn anything, like the dude from last week who didn’t wear a mask, didn’t believe it was real, then got it and gave it to his wife, who’s now on the vent and may not live. Now he’s very sorry, and is telling everyone to mask up—but that was what it took to learn.
I’m a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, but slowly over the last four years I have found myself actually becoming inured to these increased feelings of apathy at the suffering of people like that. In my darker places I find myself wishing these bad things, which they so casually, callously, often gleefully gloss over, to be visited on them. It seems this is the only way to break through their bubble. This is how I have evolved during this fucking insanity we are forced to live in. I find it sad that this has happened to me, but I really don’t have much regret at where I find myself in these times.
Just wait.
By the end of the year, in order to be a republican in good standing, you will have to be against masks, against contact tracing, being tested, and be anti-vax. They are already against masks, the rest is simple incrementalism.
If Biden wins, by dec every republican politician in Washington will be telling people to not take any vaccine that becomes available, particularly if foreign sourced. Then they will blame Biden for those deaths.
And the media will both sides the hell out of it.
We are never getting below the magic 1 without a vaccine……which will not work when it arrives.
Our ‘lock down’ was never a lock down!, it’s was a pretend lock down where everyone was still allowed to go where ever they wanted. There has never been a time in the last 2 months where I could not get in my car and drive where ever I wanted…including out of state. At any time I could have driven up to LA (1 hour north), fed the homeless in Hollywood, then drove back home stopping for food And gas in Orange County, then walking on the beach.
Americans don’t give a f#@k about other people deaths. They never have. Half the time Americans don’t care about their own. It’s a primary characteristic.
It’s going to burn across this country for a long time. And while it’s doing that they are going to open up the schools, and come September they will start playing football again, in packed stadiums. Shit, they are going to have the republican convention in August, and 100,000 will show up from all over the country.
That home your parents are in? Eventually someone’s going to kick the doors in so they can visit their parents, free from the tyranny of wearing a mask. They are not ‘safe’ there.
Let’s not forget the in March the CDC and almost all the medical community were telling us that masks were not needed, and it was silly to wear one. This is the same time period that South Korea (ahem, right next to China!) stopped the spread…..while wearing masks. If after that you believe anybody gives a f$#k about other people dying, I don’t know what to say.
It’s been my prediction since March that it’s 400,000 deaths. Now it’s will be more.
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I feel your pain and that of others here. My son is an LPN in a nursing home and, last I knew, they would not let anyone in the home, family or not. He is mostly hurt by the alert residents who want so badly to see their children, grandchildren and greats. And they cannot. That is a heartache we can all feel. It is sad this pandemic has hit the elderly and others with pulmonary problems so badly.
I become filled with great anger when I listen to the cynical people on TV expressing their rights to freedom over the “incalculable” horror of 100,000 deaths to date. I guess they don’t have old ones or others with health conditions they wanted in their lives. May they one day wish they had a few of them as good friends. Watch out for the karma, Rashell.
I know its not about how you feel personally but asthma seems to poorly correlate with bad outcomes. That is, she does not seem to be in as high a risk group as initially thought. If you are fat, have hypertension or are diabetic are biggest risks.
My reaction to the quote is basically I think its time to adopt the Trump playbook. I want future democratic admins to govern for the suburbs and urbs and ignore the rurals in distribution as much as legally possible.
In my mind I am evolving into the same mindset. If we wake up the morning after the election and we have the House, Senate, and Presidency, Democrats better damn well be coming into town in January with a steamroller. Republicans should have no voice in anything that happens. I am prepared to defend those efforts with any legal means at my disposal. This cancer that is modern conservatism and the Republican Party has to be crushed in a monumental way. Call it a revolution or whatever the fuck you want, but this shit just has to be dealt with. Gloves have to be off, and eyes focused on the mission. Nothing is off the table. The existence of the republic and the function of small “d” democracy hangs in the balance. There will be no other opportunities and certainly no do-overs. We will have one chance, and we have to be prepared to go all in.
You bet. get a really big steamroller. They and their regulations have got to go.
Can’t decide if this woman is more selfish or stupid.
Selfishness is the step child of stupidity, so stupid always wins that contest.
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Sepsis decimated much of my immune system in 2016. Cost me part of my leg. It is recommended that I stay the fuck in, by the people with degrees and jobs in infectious disease and such, even if they have never done reality tv. It is driving me nuts, but I understand the science to a degree and the math to a larger one, so I am doing it. Ironically surrounded by local family who are hardcore republicans and want the country to open at the SAME time they want to shackle me to the homestead. They get it a tiny bit that I am at a heightened risk but the rest is bullshitin their eyes. Because their favorite station tells them it is. I am very afraid for the country.