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1. Pics/reports from northern Wisco say highways, bars, and restaurants are jammed w/people this weekend. It's like the first 15 minutes of a slasher movie, with all the pretty people frolicking in the woods while the murderer bides his time behind a tree.
2. It's happening even though no scientist has declared it safe. The "reopening" is driven by politicians, business lobbyists, conspiracy theorists, and people who are bored. The virus is not controlled. It's as dangerous to be out this weekend as it was a month ago.
3. Yesterday's numbers indicate we're starting to see the early thin edge of the effects of people unlocking themselves after the court decision. Two weeks from now we'll start seeing the effects of this weekend. Hope I'm wrong but it's going to be disastrous.
4. The whole purpose of the lockdown was to give us time to fight the virus by ramping up testing/tracing, which we did not do. Everything we did/didn't do in those 2 months was wasted. 4-6 weeks from now, when case numbers blow up, we're going to need to do it again.
5. But there's no authority in WI that can do it. Health dept and gov are neutered, and right wingers will sue any city/county that tries strong restrictions on its own. This summer, if you and I don't get sick and die, it will be entirely due to A) our own efforts and B) luck.
6. And if/when you/I get it, the blame is going to be placed on us for "not being careful." But in Wisco, the blame lies with 4 GOP justices on the SupCo, the GOP leadership in the legislature, and voters who enable them. What we were doing was working, and *they stopped it.*
7. They don't believe in the public good. They don't believe in shared community. They don't believe that they owe anything to anyone else. They think life is a zero-sum game that they can't win unless somebody else loses, but also that the losers deserve it.
8. Every plan I've seen for reopening schools and spectator sports (for example) requires people to make sacrifices for the public good. Think they'll do it? No. School mandates masks? "I won't let my kid wear one." Social distancing at the Brewer game? "I sit where I want."
9. Without a willingness to give a simple damn about others--never mind asking them to make actual sacrifices, some of these people have to be persuaded just to *care*--this crisis is *never* going to end. We'll just keep shoveling bodies into the woodchipper. /fin
