I Am Surrounded by Covidiots: Keeping Your Distance 22

I am surrounded by covidiots.  I don't mean to sound so negative, but it's true.  It doesn't take much observation to realize that few are still taking this virus seriously.

Governor Kemp has decided to make Georgia the world's guinea pig, eliminating social distancing in the state. That may not be what he intended to do, but that's what has happened.  He took his foot off the brake, cracked open the door, and fools rushed in.

We don't have to do this.  We don't have to be lemmings.

Not everyone has a choice.  Many will be forced back to work, whether they want to or not.* Unemployment may not be available to you once your employer reopens.  Your small business may not be able to delay rent once the landlord realizes you have the Governor's permission to reopen.

We are putting many of our service workers into untenable positions.  But what they hey?  They're just marginal people anyways, right?  Burger flippers and people of low education and value.

But that's not the worst of it.  It's the behavior of people around those service workers.  The Governor and Trump have given them the go-ahead to not give a crap about others.  A store security guard in Michigan was shot and killed after refusing entry to someone because they weren't wearing a mask.  In another incident, a woman asks a man in a retail line to move to six feet away and instead moves closer.  Myself, I observed a man in a grocery store (unmasked, of course) making fun of social distancing to his female companion. 

We can't sacrifice for more than a couple of weeks, and then we break.  I honestly didn't know it would be this bad, but it is.

We'll have to see.  In another two to three weeks, we'll know how much this experiment has hurt our state, how many lives we have sacrificed so that we can pretend nothing is going on.

When I post stuff about this on Facebook, all the responses I get back are supportive.  Everyone who responds to me understands how dangerous this is, and are disgusted by the behavior of those not taking it seriously.  But clearly, somebody is going out there.  Clearly, somebody's making up the defiant, unprotected crowds I see out and about.

So, if you're one of those, I have to ask - what is going through your mind?  Do you think it's over?  Does the loss of life not bother you?  Have you wholly drunk the Kemp-Trump Koolaid?  I mean, really, what is going on???

We're all guinea pigs now, all of us in Georgia.  Even those who are trying to be careful are at risk. 

I noticed the numbers reported from the Georgia Department of Health fluctuate strangely.  Sometimes the numbers go down instead of up.  I read articles that indicated that both Kemp and DeSantis of Florida may be attempting to fudge the numbers.  I told this to someone important in my life, and they replied, "Why are you surprised?  Kemp fudged the numbers to get elected.  Why would he stop there?"

Indeed.  Why would he?

Welcome, fellow Georgians, to the status of being Kemp's guinea pigs.

God help us all.


*look, I understand part of why some are worried.  The social safety net in Georgia sucks big time, and the federal government is more interested in protecting large corporations and the wealthy.  The lifting of stay-at-home in Georgia is valuing not just the economy, but also the state budget over human lives, leaving many vulnerable and with no choice but to come back out.  This is not directed at service workers, who have little choice but to expose themselves, but to the a..hole customers who think social distancing is at an end.