It's also been unfair to the front line medical staff since the beginning. I think it was mentioned here that the US health system never got overwhelmed. It is now.
Southern Arizona hospitals approaching ICU bed capacity from COVID-19
But the idea of being this coddled, this fragile, and having so much hate for others that you refuse to wear a mask? Death is not going to deter these people, not of friends or family. I saw a guy this morning telling a reporter that he had a friend that dies, his son was on a ventilator. He's loud and proud mask free MAGA.
I use to think this mattered - it doesn't to Trump supporters. They see no future for themselves so they're just helping it along. Which makes me wonder what they're going on about jobs and the economy for.
Yeah, it has been unfair since the beginning. I think it's particularly unfair now to essential workers where there's a lot of peer pressure to forego masks.
I know several Trump supporters who aren't angry, hateful people though. I'm quite sure a lot of them are, but what I take away from the ones I know is that their confidence in the "knowledge" of the coronavirus being mostly harmless is fueled primarily by the group think they are immersed in and the experience of the group they are immersed in (and frankly, that's something that *anyone* is susceptible to - anyone who says they aren't susceptible to group think is revealing their own lack of self awareness). This anti-mask attitude already has a toll (if the consensus among virologists and epidemiologists is to be given credit), but it's so "out of sight/out of mind" that a lot of good people fall on the side of erring in group think. I think a more pronounced event like this (in which no one wears masks, practically ensuring there will be casualties) smack in the middle of social groups his supporters are immersed in will drag the consequences into the open enough to make it harder to deny. (I don't doubt many will still deny and cry "fake news" about whatever the koolaid is preaching - desperately attributing deaths to something else - but I also think/hope that it will bring consequences home for enough supporters to make a dent).
I mean, it's one thing to argue that people should be allowed to work so that they don't lose their homes/can eat, and that's worth the cost of a few (thousand) vulnerable lives. (I'm not saying I agree, I'm just saying it's not as "the freedom to get a manicure and go to Fuddruckers is worth killing ALL the grandmas and vulnerable people!" psycho as it's being made out to be). But to argue that a Trump rally is worth even one single vulnerable life? Only the most fucked up amongst his supporters would argue that.
I just think a huge Trump supporter gathering without masks is probably our best hope of waking some of them up. It pisses me off that it'll reach medical/essential workers, but ignorance about the efficacy of masks is reaching them anyway and maybe an event like this could swing the anti-mask attitude enough to ultimately save more lives than would be lost if his rallies weren't starting up again? The realization that wearing masks shouldn't be a political badge won't happen until red areas get hit harder.
Or something.
I just don't think most Trump supporters are as hateful and psychopathic as the loudest among them suggests. They need this to hit home, to be immersed in the reality of it, for it to stop looking like "fake news."
