This @zeynep article is an important read and illustrates a criminally underrated perspective on the pandemic: accepting the severity of COVID-19 while calling for more thoughtful mitigation. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/closing-parks-ineffective-pandemic-theater/609580

Among the many tragedies caused by conservative leadership dragging their feet in Britain, Australia, and the US, as well as the death cult phenomenon of conservatives literally proposing sacrificing the elderly, is that there is a climate of hyperpartisanship around mitigation.

It has now become the 'good liberal' position to call for extreme mitigation, lockdowns, enforcement, and shaming without much thought for the consequences. Woe betide you if you call for nuance lest you get lumped in with the death cult denialists.

The right wing denialist position is to oppose lockdowns to "save the economy" because COVID-19 isn't "just a little flu."

The leftist position is to change the economy to mitigate the damage, massively fund healthcare, *and* challenge attempts to extend state power all at once.

One position calls for abject denial, the other calls for us to 'fight smarter not harder.' To wit, Tufekci's point re: parks is that you need to develop policy that channels peoples' natural desires in a healthy way.

People are *going* to bend the rules. So you have to create conditions that enable them to do this as safely as possible instead of indulging in the pandemic equivalent of "abstinence only" education.

Militarised enforcement, meanwhile, erodes public trust. We are in this for the long haul, we will need potentially disruptive change until there's a vaccine. So that has to be sustainable over a long period of time. Lockdowns are not sustainable.

The tendency of many liberals and even some leftists to antagonise anyone perceived to be shirking is only going to erode the solidarity and democratic spirit needed to combat this virus.

Some media, meanwhile, encourage this tendency---there's a whole genre in Australian print media of social distancing porn that baits people into getting angry at park-goers through misleading camera angles.

But this individualises a collective problem, and takes the focus off of governments for failing to provide meaningful pandemic policies: more comprehensive relief packages, more healthcare funding, and more humane social distancing systems.

Because, yes, there can be a way to systematise this. To, say, limit park attendance without cutting it off, or to apportion outdoor time to those most in need, and, of course, to develop the rigorous test-trace regime we'll need in order to pull out of this mess.

That's on governments. It does not depend on some wanker on social media that you're yelling at to make yourself feel better.

I remember seeing a tweet that compared social distancing to being in primary school, where one misbehaving kid led to a loss of recess time for the whole class.

This amusing tweet was meant to *encourage* us to socially distance. But I ask you to remember how well those collective punishments actually worked in practise. Arbitrary power, treating people like children, and a culture of punishment will not get us through the next year.