Natural selection at work?

[edelsont]

Our Presumpident Trump went off his meds again today.  As the New York Times put it, he "on Friday began openly fomenting right-wing protests of social distancing restrictions in [three] states where groups of his conservative supporters have been violating stay-at-home orders."  Yes, these people have been gathering in numbers to protest being told not to gather in numbers.  And he is urging them on, which may lead to them gathering in larger numbers.

 

Do you see a possibility of unintended consequences here?

 

The larger the groups, the greater the likelihood that some who attend are already infected with the coronavirus.  Thus, the greater the likelihood that they will infect some of their fellow attenders.

 

The latter victims, in turn, infect others with whom they subsequently come into contact.  It seems likely that the "right wing" will be overrepresented within this next wave of virus carriers, as well.

 

So right-wingers contract the virus, and die of it, at a higher rate than do the rest of the population.

 

If this happens at a significant enough scale, it could affect the outcome of November's elections.

 

I would welcome this hypothetical outcome -- fewer right-wing votes -- but I don't want it to happen this way.  I just can't be happy at the prospect of substantial numbers of unnecessary deaths, even if they are caused, in large measure, by the rank stupidity of the victims themselves. 

Comments

[dancesofthelight]

Unless it's Warhammer 40K novels (and even then, really) viruses don't have will or ideological affiliations. They'll infect everyone else. Those Nurgle worshiping fools will get sick all right...and innocent people shall to the same plagues they arouse with just as little to show for it.

[dewline]

Those "Tweets of 'Liberation'" have no good outcome attached to them.

[mikeyxw]

The way the protests are taking place are kind of stupid, but there is a legitimate point behind them. In Oregon, there are five counties that haven't reported a single case of corona virus and six more that have reported one. These counties are under the same lock down as the urban counties that have had thousands. The economies in these counties have also been in decline for a couple of decades and are unlikely to bounce back like the urban ones, you know the ones who really benefit from the lock down. They are also the counties where deaths from despair are more common. Deaths from despair are the third most common cause of death in the US, accounting for 180,000 deaths per year and are linked to economic decline and poverty, which the lock down is sure to cause. They're also overlooked. The initial paper on the subject, written by a Nobel prize winning economist which uncovered a previously unstudied subject that was the third most common cause of death, was rejected without even being reviewed by the JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine. Nice way to show no shits are given.

They'd be better off sticking to the protests from their cars which slow traffic. Of course, these were met with complaints that they block traffic, which to say the least is a criticism that is unevenly applied to different types of protests. They are probably right that the lock downs, at least at this time, are doing more harm than good in their communities and Detroit needs a different type of lock down than some county in the UP.

[garote]

The cities will give a collective damn about the countryside’s shelter-in-place woes as soon as they concede their absurdly unjust electoral college advantage ;)