Common sense left the United States — witness the Miami Marlins, COVID — and Governor Ron DeSantis

© 2020 Peter Free

 

28 July 2020

 

 

Today

 

I use a couple of examples to illustrate the thoughtlessness of the US response to COVID-19.

 

These revolve around the idea that we Americans generally seem not to understand how epidemics work. For us, it's magical thinking most of the time.

 

 

Take Major League Baseball

 

It tried to start its shortened season with empty stands.

 

How the fan-segregating technique — by itself — was supposed to beat COVID's spread among closely interacting players on (and off) the field beats me.

 

 

Sure enough, it didn't

 

Fifteen Miami Marlins players and two coaches have been infected.

 

This total arrives after the Marlins apparently knowingly took the field (against the Phillies) with three already SARS-CoV-2-carrying ballplayers.

 

Stupidity and careless disregard (for the other guys) do not come any rawer than this.

 

 

The obvious glitch in the MLB's initial reasoning

 

If you let a bunch of comparatively youthful, undisciplined, randy and partying people — pretty much do whatever they think is appropriate off the field — they are going to spread an epidemic of this type.

 

Professional ballplayers — most of whom legitimately think they are special (in some way) — are not going to take the same consistently self-protecting precautions that a home-bound and medically knowledgeable 75 year old granny might.

 

 

A related aside — perhaps the NFL will be different

 

Even with its much more challenging (skin-to-skin and in-your-face slobbering) COVID conditions, the disciplined and greed-protecting NFL seems to run at a different octane than the other leagues.

 

Of professional (American) football's internal cohesion, sportswriter Charles Robinson observed that:

 

 

No franchise wants to risk the league’s entire season because it made a mistake. Nobody wants to be the reckless embarrassment. Nobody wants to be the gambling pariah.

 

And more than anything, nobody wants to be the weak link that ultimately undercuts the vast amount of work that has gone into getting the 2020 season on track.

 

For that simple reason, we wasted some energy on Monday measuring what the Marlins’ outbreak means for the NFL.

 

Why?

 

If a huge swath of NFL players on one team suddenly came up positive on a Saturday, it’s very likely that Sunday will produce a forfeit rather than a situation where a team hopes for the best and ultimately ends up endangering another franchise, and by extension, the league and 2020 season.

 

© 2020 Charles Robinson, The NFL hoped to learn from baseball’s COVID-19 mistakes. The troubling lessons began quickly, Yahoo Sports (27 July 2020)

 

 

The moral? — COVID has drilled a peephole into the United States' withered-brain skull

 

By way of another illustrating instance of this, Florida's governor (Ron DeSantis) has ordered schools to reopen.

 

Reopening schools — given the United States and Florida's complete lack of relevant epidemiological investigation and preparation — would obviously be problematic.

 

Consider (in support of that evaluation) the recent South Korean study that indicated that school age kids spread COVID just as effectively as adults.

 

See, also:

 

 

Beau of the Fifth Column, Let's talk about what happened in Florida in 8 days, YouTube (27 July 2020)

 

Richard D. Wolff, Wolff Responds: Unsafe Schools, Another System Failure, YouTube (12 July 2020)

 

 

Under these COVID-related school circumstances — and the absence of having attempted to gather any solid epidemiological data to guide policy — following the Precautionary Principle seems wise.

 

Lamentably, wisdom and American Establishment do not often appear in the same sentence. Except in illustrating sagacity's lack.