Alongside news about temporary internment sites and overwhelmed hospitals, my social media feeds are full of people expressing fury about neighbors not social distancing enough. I’ve felt + expressed this fury too, but I’m thinking today about what it tells us. /1

Why are we so angry at each other? Because we all have very good reasons to be furious, but we have exceptionally few outlets to direct that anger where it can actually make a difference.

We feel furious and helpless, so we turn on each other. /2

Sometimes, it's helpful. Some people won't take social distancing seriously unless they're shamed into compliance. Sometimes people just need reminders. Messaging to the public is changing on a daily or hourly basis, and sometimes people don't know what others are expecting. /3

But sometimes, it gets ugly.

A man threw a cup of ice out of his car window at a woman in my neighborhood who was walking home from picking up needed medications from the pharmacy, yelling "stay home."

That's not social distancing either, FYI. /4

I heard from another neighbor that another man in a car screamed obscenities at her daughters for "not social distancing from their friends."

They were two sisters, taking their dog for a walk on their street. They were social distancing just fine. /5

Since January, Americans have been told, over + over, that what happens to us in this pandemic is a matter of our own individual choices. That we are responsible for the outcome.

That's a lie. A lie that lets those whose choices actually have vast consequences off the hook. /6

I tweeted about this a month ago. Unfortunately, the paradigm hasn't changed all that much, even though almost everything else has. https://twitter.com/debra_caplan/status/1235569589238497286?s=20

We were told "wash your hands." We shamed each other for not washing our hands enough.

Handwashing wasn't enough to stop this virus anywhere, and the idea that we could have stopped this with more handwashing and without major governmental action is preposterous. /8

Now we're told to stay home (+ we should!) but we're shaming each other for not staying home enough.

That's not the solution either. This won't get better without big solutions that start at the top. We need the federal gov't to step up in ways that it hasn't + likely won't /9

We feel helpless and out of control because we are and this is. The United States is now the epicenter of this pandemic and we still don't have a national stay at home order, just a suggestion. We're supposed to wear masks but our President says it's optional. /10

In some places, life has changed dramatically and completely, and in other places, it's hardly changed at all and people are going about their normal, everyday lives. /11

In the rest of the world, people are dealing with 2 devastating catastrophes at once: a terrifying pandemic + a rapidly collapsing economy.

Americans are dealing with 3 simultaneous catastrophes. We're also watching in real time as our government utterly fails to protect us /11

We're furious, and there's nowhere productive for that anger to go. So we take it out on each other. But that's not where it comes from.

Our anger towards one another is a byproduct of our collapsing social contract as a nation. /12