Posted on 04/26/2020 12:53:59 PM PDT by Kaslin
The New York Times' Bret Stephens took a lot of heat for arguing New York lockdown rules don't fit the rest of the country. I know the feeling.
Bret Stephens has a tough job. I don’t mean like 19th-century coal miner tough, but as one of the “conservative” opinion contributors at The New York Times, he winds up pleasing none of the people a lot of the time.
This is because much of the Grey Lady’s leftist readership doesn’t think the Times should run conservative views at all and much of the American right finds the anti-Trump “can’t we go back to Mitt Romney” style of conservatism to be tiresome and milquetoast. On Saturday, it was former who targeted their ire at Stephens.
In a column titled “America Shouldn’t Have to Play by New York Rules,” Stephens argued that given how much more serious the coronavirus outbreak has been in New York, the rest of the country should not be on the same level of lockdown. It caught my interest because three weeks ago at The Federalist I ran a column titled “We Can’t Destroy The Country for the Sake of New York City,” in which I argued the exact same thing. So I was sympathetic but unsurprised by the backlash he faced.
The response to Stephen’s article was different, by and large in one respect, compared to the reaction to mine. Three weeks ago. my critics assured me that within days wide swaths of the country would mirror New York’s situation. Stephens was spared that rather silly argument because obviously that did not come to pass.
According to antibody tests in Los Angeles and Miami, somewhere around 4-6 percent of people in those big cities carried the virus. In New York City, that number was 20 percent. All three cities went on lockdown at about the same time. It is now obvious that unique elements of population density and public transit make Gotham vastly more vulnerable to the virus.
Having reluctantly given up the position that everywhere will be like New York City, Stephen’s critics found two central new arguments to make. The first is that New York lockdown rules are not being “forced” on the rest of the country. The second is that the American people favor continued social distancing by large numbers. Let’s take each in their turn.
The claim that New York is not responsible for the severe lockdowns we see across the country is the kind of revisionist history that we will all be drowned in over the coming weeks. Through late March and early April, Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci made clear time and again that their recommendations were based mostly on data from New York, where the most cases and testing existed.
Throughout this time, there was a hue and cry from most on the left that we needed a national lockdown. Governors who resisted, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, were pilloried. Nobody on the left was insisting that each state should take its own approach; in fact, the exact opposite was true. A response to coronavirus crafted from and shaped by the perilous outlying situation in New York City was grafted on most of the country.
As to the question of public support for the lockdown, much was made of Stephens describing those who oppose it as “so much of America.” Critics cited polls showing that as little as 15 percent of Americans support ending restrictions. But a couple things on that. First of all, 15 percent of Americans is about 50 million citizens, who are under stay at home orders of unprecedented length. We have also seen governors on both sides of the aisle begin loosening restrictions in the face of economic disaster.
The bottom line is that Stephens is very sensibly pointing out something that has been obvious for weeks. The outbreak in New York is unlike any outbreak anywhere else in the country, and it is absurd to think that the rest of the country must keep to New York’s reopening schedule.
Perhaps the silliest take in response to this blatant fact is that those who accept it somehow wish harm on New York City. This makes absolutely no sense. In fact, by distancing New York’s response from the rest of the nation’s, one gives the city even greater capacity to shut down compared to other areas. It is just as true that New York shouldn’t be playing by Indiana’s rules as it is that Indiana should not be playing by New York’s.
Too many in the media and the government have resisted addressing good news, such as we see in lower-infected areas, for fear of instilling a false confidence in the American people that leads to them letting their guard down. It can’t work that way. We need to hear all of the news, good and bad, to make sensible decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Three weeks ago, this was a fringe position. Now it appears inTthe New York Times and is being instituted across the country. It was true then that a one size fits all approach made no sense, and it is still true today.
The DemoNazis want the entire country shut down because they think it will bring Trump down.
They’re wrong. Trump is going to be re-elected because the voters are beginning to wake up and figure out why the Dims are so hot on telling everyone to “stay at home”.
Absolutely
The answer is: "We can't." But this is in no way justification for continuing the lockdowns in those areas that are trying to re-open as the threat posed by the Chinese Virus continues to wane. Sure there's a risk ... but it's not a mindless choice between "preventing new infections" and "not preventing new infections" as regards continuing the lockdown in outlying areas, it's a choice between whether we restore our country while we still have a chance to or permit our country to deteriorate rapidly for as long as the lockdown continues. That is, will fear of the Chinese Virus, not of the virus itself, prevent us from doing what must soon be done?
can we get the president to build the wall around NY city or bomb the bridges
On the contrary, they would be clamoring for drones and barbed wire and troops surrounding the hotspot only, while they went about their business as usual.
NSS
Yep...I think they are pissing off a segment of the population that was Formerly never trumpers
Open up! Let NYC and New Yorkers find out that the rest of us are not dependent on their smug asses for survival. They on the other hand will learn the obverse lesson.
Bump!
Subways, crowded high-rise public housing, big international airports, and a lot of poor immigrants.
If your county doesn’t have these, please feel free to re-open everything.
Thank God you’re stuck there, noob.
Why do the rest of us in New York have be in lockdown/quarantine? You do realize there are TWO New Yorks.
1. New York City (area)
2. The WHOLE REST of the EMPIRE STATE!
My county (Tompkins population 100,000, I know you never heard of it) Think The “City of Evil”, Ithaca, NY
Here are our statistics”
TOMPKINS COUNTY
Total Tests Completed: 3,104
Total Test Results Pending: 64
Total Negative Test Results: 2,910
Total Confirmed Cases: 130
Total Recovered: 94
Currently Hospitalized: 6
County Resident Deaths; 0
Non-Resident Deaths: 2
2 people came from OTHER counties to die HERE.
We hardly hear about hydroxychloroquine unless it is too scare people from using it. The media says that it has side effects—guess what? All the drugs that are advertised on television all day long also have side effects but that doesn’t stop the media from advertising them. The drug ads even warn people of potential side effects. Why is hydroxychloroquine being singled out? It is not sold over the counter, you have to ask your doctor who is a trained professional. Every day I am waiting the media to really start getting professional opinions about this medicine which could help reverse this epidemic but their is an odd silence about it.
People are seeing that their is much treachery among the high and mighty.
Recently I have been thinking about what it is like to live in New York. People live in tall buildings so they have to use elevators where they will share small spaces with other people. Even if they get into an empty elevator they do not know if someone was in it a minute ago. They all have to use the same door to exit and enter. Hundreds of hands touch those doors every day. It’s a petri dish.
Here in Ithaca, our Buffalo just went tits up! Buffalo Wild Wings, that is.
Best wings in town! Or was.
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