The explicit and only real purpose behind the initial coronavirus lockdowns was to prevent surges in cases from overwhelming our healthcare system. But then, of course, “Fifteen days to slow the spread!” became nearly a year of children (and predominately mothers) forced to suffer through the farce of “distance learning,” businesses forced to bargain with local officials to stay remotely open, and everyone exhausted, fatter, and lonelier.
The pandemic has revealed not just a dangerous stupidity of the public, but also, and more consequentially, of our supposed expert class. Despite science indicating for centuries that mask-wearing protects people from the transmission of airborne respiratory diseases, President Trump allowed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Surgeon General, and the CDC to peddle the WHO’s lie that masks don’t work. Making a complete 180 months later cost a crucial portion of public trust, and the tool that can cheaply help us get back to the closest version of normalcy before a vaccine hits the market has sadly become politicized and distrusted.
North Dakota is now paying the price for that distrust with skyrocketing coronavirus cases largely attributable to a lack of mask compliance. And the state is about to pay again for the distrust in lockdowns sown by governments across the country.
North Dakota’s coronavirus cases have soared up 61% from two weeks ago, and hospitals are now at 100% capacity, leading Governor Doug Burgum to make the startling admission that COVID-positive nurses can still work in coronavirus units. In a vacuum, this is a clear-cut case to institute a two-week lockdown and a statewide mask mandate in indoor public spaces, such as grocery stores and restaurants. But that’s not going to happen because, at this point, why would anyone in the country believe that a two-week lockdown doesn’t mean a nine-month lockdown?
For nearly a year, North Dakotans have watched tyrants such as Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer use the coronavirus as an excuse to attack basic rights such as worship and commerce, and even as blue areas emerged from the most formal part of the “lockdowns,” stay-at-home orders, plenty of areas in the country remained functionally locked down. Consider, if your children are banned from going to school, your family can’t go to church, you can’t celebrate Halloween and are told to cancel Thanksgiving, and you don’t have your job because your indoor restaurant or store is shut down, does that not effectively constitute a lockdown? Babies conceived at the beginning of this nonsense have been born to fathers still unallowed to accompany their mothers to ultrasounds, and they won’t meet their grandparents until some time in the indefinite future.
So will North Dakota be able to institute a lockdown without massive citizen uproar over the thought of becoming the next New York? The safe money is on no.
It will cost lives, not just, or even primarily, in terms of coronavirus deaths, but also in terms of the other people in need of emergency care for other, totally non-coronavirus related reasons. And that’s not to mention all of the preventative screenings, vaccinations, and annual checkups missed that will result in late-stage cancers, influenza, and other latent causes of mortality.
It’s a predictable end to a preventable cautionary tale about the danger of squandering credibility, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless.
