There are no shortcuts to defeating the coronavirus
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Version 0 of 1. In 1934, Cole Porter wrote an iconic cowboy song titled “Don’t Fence Me In.” A partial list of the artists who have recorded it over the years suggests that the lyrics — “Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, / Don’t fence me in. / Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, / Don’t fence me in.” — capture something fundamental about the national self-image. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Ella Fitzgerald, Willie Nelson, the Killers and David Byrne have all put their stamp on the song. Yet because of covid-19, we’re fenced in, and must remain fenced in a while longer. But it is only natural that we don’t like our confinement one bit — and understandable that some of us grasp at straws to try to rationalize our way out of it. Freedom of movement is fundamental to our national mythology, our collective origin story. We inhabit a continental expanse of spacious skies, amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties. The vast majority of our ancestors came or were brought here from elsewhere, and family lore often consists largely of the stories of how they moved from one part of the country to another in search of opportunity and happiness. Our own lives, for many of us, have been peripatetic: I was born in the South, went to college in the Midwest and worked my first job on the West Coast. Right now, and probably for weeks to come, I can’t even venture across town. Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic This urge to roam provides fertile ground for deadly nonsense being pushed by covid-19 minimizers such as Fox News host Laura Ingraham and commentator Alex Berenson, who maintain that governments have overreacted to the novel coronavirus. Some go so far as to argue it would be better to simply let the pandemic run its course. Even Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who once urged his viewers to take the pandemic seriously, has begun flirting with a version of this narrative, claiming that elected officials are relishing this opportunity to constrain our freedom. (Disclaimer: I am a contributor for MSNBC.) “We’re told we have no choice but to do this, to stop our lives completely,” Carlson said during his show on Wednesday. “Mass quarantines, they tell us again and again, are the only way to save lives, but that’s a lie. They don’t know it’s true, despite what they claim. There is no scientific record to consult. It’s never been done. We are currently living through the largest and most expensive experiment ever conducted in human history.” The contrarian view is based on pseudoscience that can sound reasonable. Look at how many cases of covid-19 appear completely asymptomatic, the skeptics say. Look at the studies that suggest the fatality rate may “actually” be quite low, akin to that of a bad flu outbreak. Look at how Sweden decided not to shut everything down and instead to let the population develop herd immunity. Look at how the models predicting hundreds of thousands of U.S. deaths overshot the mark — at least so far. Actual experts say none of these arguments holds water. Asymptomatic spread makes covid-19 more dangerous, not less. Those studies minimizing the death rate have glaring methodological issues. Sweden is suffering more deaths, per capita, than the United States. And the toll thus far is less horrific than the models predicted precisely because comprehensive social distancing and stay-at-home policies were enacted — and because we have complied with them. The definitive argument against this view, however, is what happened inside hospitals in China, Italy, Spain and the New York area when covid-19 got out of hand. You don’t “ride out” a disease that fills emergency rooms, intensive care units and even busy hospital corridors with desperately ill patients. You don’t allow most of the population to be infected with a virus that can ravage its victims in so many ways, with unclear long-term implications for those who recover. You don’t adopt a policy of benign neglect toward a pathogen that overflows hospital morgues and fills refrigerator trucks with corpses. What you do, instead, is something that runs counter to our nature, something that makes us want to rebel: You fence us in. The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us. There are encouraging signs that the very worst of the pandemic may be behind us — if only we can remain patient. The economy will gradually open again, but life will be different until we have an effective vaccine or anti-viral treatment. We’ll wear masks and wash our hands obsessively. More of us will work from home. We’ll invent new ways to live our lives, because invention is another facet of the national self-image. The only way to ensure that our horizons remain as wide as the limitless prairies is to realize there are no shortcuts. We have to see this through. Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Read more: David Ignatius: How China can end the covid-19 conspiracy theories before they get worse Max Boot: By punishing coronavirus truth-tellers, Trump puts us all at risk Bill Gates: Here are the innovations we need to reopen the economy Molly Roberts: We’re telling ourselves fairy tales while stuck inside Submit a question for Eugene Robinson’s April 28 live chat Read the transcript of Eugene Robinson’s April 21 live chat: It’s all about testing |