Not only that, but being mostly male, older and lower-middle class, the Trump voter is maybe the most vulnerable voting demographic.Mister Tee wrote:
Maybe it's just my view from The Epicenter, but the idea of "going back to normal" seems pure fantasy -- I can't imagine when any of us will feel comfortable once again going to a movie or restaurant. (Hell, when I see people in an old movie shake hands, I'm screaming at them to stop before they die.) I recognize the Trump folks' desperation to do something to revive the economy -- the status quo is sure electoral poison (more on which soon in the Campaign 2020 thread) -- but there's nothing you can do to outspin a pandemic. Some red states will no doubt follow the Trump Piper's lead, but 1) they represent so small a percentage of national economic power as to have no impact on the overall picture and 2) they'll likely bring about more deaths, which will make the economic situation worse in the long run.
I know the protests are bogus. (One protest was funded by the DeVos family, and for a group of alleged small business owners, there are an awful lot of gray-heads among them.) But there are hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed people who were told early on - remember this? - that a lockdown of two weeks, maybe four at most, would be enough to defeat the spread, and are now told this could go on through the summer and the food supply chains are in peril. I think the country's done a really good job in following the lockdown guidelines for the most part. But people will be at their wits end soon. Psychologically and economically, we can't sustain this way of life for much longer. It's inevitable that even the hardest hit regions are going to open back up in 60 days if not 30.
I think the number is lowball, but not ridiculously so. I'd guess more around 80-90 thousand by summer's end, which is more optimistic than the half-a-million I was thinking about a month ago.also find it VERY hard to believe the 60,000 death estimate everyone (including my trusted fellow Regis-alumnus Dr. Fauci) was tossing around last week. We're at 36,000 already, with only NY showing any signs of leveling (at a scary-high number), and many places still on the rise. How long before that model gets adjusted upward?
And I'm talking about projected mass deaths like they were box office predictions. Quite a new normal we've got here.