I’m sorry if this comes off as combative, but: if your government gave you next to no financial relief, did not mandate masks, allowed bars and retail businesses to stay open, re-opened university campuses, and then told you “you MUST go to work and school and interact with hundreds of strangers, but you’re a terrible person if you go visit grandma or get together for drinks with friends after your shift or have Christmas dinner”, what exactly would YOU do?
You can say “if people really cared about each other, they would stay home no matter what the government does” all you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that this simply isn’t how behaviour modification at a population-wide scale works. Guilt and punishment does not change behaviour, providing resources and boundaries that encourage and reward the correct behaviour does.
Why should people take the pandemic seriously when every single signal being sent from the places of power that guide their lives says that this just isn’t worth giving a shit about? When you aren’t given the chance to make better choices, because you can’t financially afford to?
Blaming individual people for being “stupid” and “careless” lets the American federal and state governments (as well as other powerful institutions) off the hook for their egregious, cruel, careless policy approaches to this situation, which have left people to fend for themselves and try to make decisions under the most duress they’ve ever experienced in their lives.
The first girl caught COVID while living in a multi-roommate apartment at university (her roommates later also tested positive, which is unsurprising if you’re ever seen student housing) — then she self-quarantined, tried to recover, and ONLY travelled home to visit her family after she had started testing negative again (her family did not get sick). What could she have done better? Magically been able to afford a single apartment?
The young man who died, Jaquan Anderson, his mother was a healthcare worker, but he was living with other relatives to make sure he wouldn’t be in contact with her while attending school, and then he still he got sick. What could he have done better, exactly? Does it sound like he didn’t care?
Most of the articles on the other student athletes mention that members of their teams also tested positive — does that sound like it’s on them individually, or like it could be a sign of a serious problem in the prevention protocols being used for university sports? What would have been the “responsible” choice for them? To refuse to play the sport that they probably rely on to cover their tuition via scholarships? What better choices could they have made, within the situations these institutions set up for them?
These people ARE trying. Most Americans ARE trying. They ARE doing the best they can in their situations, with limited power and a lot of stress.
We need to stop asking why people won’t just “smarten up” and be responsible, and start asking why the government is abdicating its responsibility for public health in this crisis onto the shoulders of random young people.
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