Sunday, May 24, 2020

For Memorial Day Weekend, as US Death Toll Nears 100,000: Valuable Commentary



Martha Pengelly, "Birx: Trump does wear a mask":

Also from Fox News Sunday about its interview with Birx (which airs at 10am ET in New York): "Dr Deborah Birx says on Fox News Sunday she is still concerned with people going outside and not social distancing."  
Here's a picture of Donald Trump shaking hands with a golfing partner in Virginia on Saturday:







Heather Cox Richardson, "Letters from an American, May 23 2020":

This dramatic cover [i.e., of today's New York Times, "U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss"] does more than mark a stark number. It rejects the toxic individualism embraced by a certain portion of Trump’s base. These people refuse to isolate or wear masks either because they believe the virus isn’t actually dangerous or because they insist that public health rules infringe on their liberty or because, so far, the people most likely to die have been elderly or people of color and they are not in those categories.
"It's a personal choice," one man told a reporter as a wealthy suburb of Atlanta reopened. "If you want to stay home, stay home. If you want to go out, you can go out. I'm not in the older population. If I was to get it now, I've got a 90 percent chance of getting cured. Also, I don’t know anybody who’s got it." Another man agreed: "When you start seeing where the cases are coming from and the demographics—I'm not worried."
The New York Times cover rejects this selfishness and reminds us that we are all in this together… or should be. At least, this has been our principle in our better moments, and some people have taken it quite seriously indeed. On Monday, Memorial Day, we will honor those young men and women who did not believe that being an American meant refusing to inconvenience themselves to help their neighbors. 
Instead, to protect their fellow Americans, they laid down their lives.  



New York Times, "Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count":







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