THE GOOD NEWS is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are good and decent people. I know this because friends say I am one. So good that I get teased for too loosely defending a 72-year-old in our senior basketball league. "You gotta make him feel you," they cry. "Play him tough and hard."
We haven't played ball since last February. Meantime, the proverbial bad news has come down. Word is that some of my court critics are also Covid cryers. They rail about losing their rights by being advised to wear a mask. "I can do whatever I want. This is America," they pronounce.
A few believe that most of the Covid deaths would have happened anyway because the people were old, already sick, or just plain unlucky. "Anyone who dies becomes a Covid case," they say. "Besides, if I haven't caught it yet, I'm not going to."
Good and decent people in many ways. Yet wrong. Look at Wisconsin, where friends and family live, and where I grew up. Nine months in. Guidance ignored. Cases rising. Testing and contact tracing falling way behind. Winter coming.
"We know what's making it worse here," Susan Sanvidge, 74, a graphic designer, told a reporter in Oshkosh. "It's the schools, and it's the bars. And half of the people think Covid is a hoax anyway." Others, including health officers, attribute the rising number of cases to cookouts, weddings, birthday parties, and indoor bowling leagues. Health guidelines ignored, the virus downplayed.
In Florida, a group of unmasked men and women stormed a Target in Ft. Lauderdale, flouting the store's policy and ridiculing customers who did wear masks. Making a political, not health, statement: "We're not going to take it anymore."
And now, a month before the election, we're informed the White House and Senate is infected. With the virus. Godspeed to us all.
Image: Yale.edu
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