The public shaming of people who oppose excessively strict and inefficient economic lockdowns is getting old very quickly. It’s those who are doing the shaming who deserve to be embarrassed.
A full endorsement of the widespread shutdowns exposes a person’s sheer ignorance about what we know so far about the new coronavirus, how it spreads, and what we should be doing both to restore the economy and secure protection for those who most need it.
Shelley Luther, that salon owner in Dallas, Texas, deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She’s probably going to jail for a week now after she defied a court order to shut down her business, which she had reopened before local officials said it was allowed.
A judge called her selfish and asked her to apologize to local officials for the reopening, and she refused, explaining that she was forced to reopen because, if you can possibly imagine, she was not receiving government assistance quickly enough and her children were running out of food.
This is what the extended shutdown is doing to people. Know-it-alls feel perfectly at ease calling someone selfish for wanting to work or accusing them of threatening the lives of others — even though social distancing is almost exclusively up to the individuals who choose to engage in it.
Luther, 46, told the court that she had practiced the best health protocol that we know of, which right now means reduced capacity in commercial buildings, wearing masks, and frequent surface sanitation.
It didn’t matter, according to local authorities. She had violated the law that nonessential businesses close.
We should be able to agree that she broke a ridiculous law in a city that has had fewer than five COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 of its citizens. And she was right to refute the suggestion that she had done anything shameful.
There is yet no proven cure, nor is there a treatment, for the disease caused by the coronavirus. There is no guaranteed government assistance, and the help that has come has arrived far too late for too many people. Maybe those issues will be worked out. The sooner the better.
But I have no respect, and nor should anyone else, for people who say that everybody must just accept staying at home indefinitely with no income in hopes that something materializes sometime.
The people who champion an indefinite stay-at-home ordinance for everyone are the people who should be embarrassed. They’re the ones without a clue.
We’ve identified the patterns of the virus, and we know who is most susceptible to complications. We know that the vast majority of people will be fine and that with hygienic precautions, those living in less densely populated places have been able to reduce the spread. The shamers apparently don’t understand that there is no way to be 100% safe anyway. There will be recurring infections and, yes, more deaths until a vaccine and treatment become widely available.
Whether motivated by fear or simply by the joy of feeling morally superior, those who are shaming others for trying to move on are looking increasingly like fools. There is no shame in accepting the inevitable, which is that if the country is to survive, we’ll have to start moving on.
