The progressive left tends to view Republicans as a bunch of dupes, dummies, and demons. Hence, the widespread condemnation of Republican governors who are moving to ease lockdown restrictions in their states. As one opinionator puts it:
“Naturally, Republicans are already pushing to ease lockdown measures…Their stubborn childishness and ideological zealotry, aside from getting people killed, will likely mean lockdown measures need to last much longer than they otherwise would.” Ryan Cooper/The Week
Before assuming Republican governors are up to no good, I suggest making a good-faith effort to understand their point of view. For example, why are the governors more concerned about their state economies than about stemming the viral tide? Here’s a clue:
As the map shows, most Republican-governed states - 73% of them - have low COVID-19 death rates. Specifically, less than 50 deaths per million population. Just 36% of Democrat-governed states have such low mortality rates. Now consider the havoc and suffering wrought by shelter-in place lockdowns. To quote a member of my debate club, at length:
“If one goes a little deeper there are all sorts of harmful societal effects as well. Early childhood education is a huge one-- brain development in ages 4-6 is explosive in a way that cannot be recreated later on. Education in this time frame is irreplaceable. Kids are being forced to go without it because of a disease that has an infinitesimal chance of harming them.
If colleges don't open in the fall, or enough students defer enrollment to avoid virtual classes, many will have to shut down, or make up for it by raising tuition fees in the future. These do not seem to be good things for a higher education landscape that's already plagued by insane competition and inflated fees.
Skipping graduation is not the only harm for college seniors, it is a terrible thing to be graduating into a job market that is completely shot. Adding in college juniors when internships & part time jobs are basically non-existent right now. These people could miss out on a year or more of key early career experience, that can negatively impact the entire trajectory of their career and financial well-being. Think of the effect of the 2008 crisis on millennials. We're choosing to inflict this on a new generation of young people.
Then of course there are all the businesses being destroyed, most of which would be small business that are likely the result of years of business-owners pouring their blood sweat and tears into creating something valuable. And the millions of people cruelly thrown into unemployment. Of course, some of this can be alleviated with stimulus from the government, but right now we're pushing at the limits of fiscal and monetary policy. Any debt issued now is going to affect future generations (the ones whose health and education and job prospects we are also destroying, how nice).
Even from a health perspective it starts to appear counterproductive. While the most motivated will still get some exercise outside, I think it's fair to assume people in general are moving a lot less, and getting a lot less sunlight (key to immune health) than before… Beyond exercise and sun exposure and perhaps more insidiously, the immune system works and is strengthened from regular challenges from pathogens. For people with functioning immune systems, you are actually decreasing their ability to fight disease by locking them away for extensive periods of time. So really coming out of lockdown the vast majority of society is going to be even more at risk to disease.
All of the above, adding in social isolation (zoom is not an adequate replacement) and the indefiniteness of it all is crushing to mental health, in some cases leading to the suicides Deborah mentioned.
The trivializing dismissiveness of the urge to reopen and protect the economy is based on a fundamental mischaracterization of what "the economy" is, perhaps a result of increased socialist/communist rhetoric. Ultimately, the economy is just the aggregate outcome of millions of people *living their lives*-- feeding, clothing, sheltering, entertaining, educating themselves, contributing value to society through their chosen profession, taking care of their health and their family. When the economy contracts, that's because millions of people who were formerly able to do these things can do so no longer.
A lot of these effects are difficult to quantify, and easy to write off, and perhaps proponents of continued SIP [Shelter-in-Place] will write them off. One could argue that kindergarten doesn't matter, that some Higher Ed institutes deserve to collapse, that nobody really needs a job or career or business as long as the gov't can print checks to support them, that exercise and sunshine are overrated, and the mentally ill should just suck it up for a few more months for the sake of the grandmas.
No approach is free from trade-offs. It is possible (but also not certain!) that a continued generalized SIP approach leading to whatever endgame people want to argue might preserve a few more QALYs [Quality-Adjusted Life-Years]. But it's insulting and either disingenuous or obtuse to pretend that the urge to end the lockdown is simply from selfish people wanting to go to restaurants and sporting events. …
Most projections assume that approximately the same amount of people in any scenario are going to get the disease, it's just a question of when and how close together. For indefinite SIP to make sense at this point, when hospitals are clearly stable, rests on the assumption that increased tracking & testing will successfully "stamp out" the disease with aggressive enough isolation without requiring herd immunity. Has this ever been successfully done with a disease that is this well established? The alternative is a vaccine, which is also not a sure thing as we've never successfully made a coronavirus vaccine either (albeit with lower incentives than the current moment). Neither of these are anywhere near sure things, and we are causing untold numbers of people to suffer based on the assumption that they will succeed in a reasonable time frame.”
It’s time.