Will The U.S. Survive The Pandemic? I'm More Worried About Virulence Of Aggressively Delusional Trumpists Than I Am About The Pervasiveness Of The Virus Itself

Fox nailed it! Wave II is going to be humongous-- mostly because of Trump's inability to cope with the pandemic... but also because of governors' inability to cope with Trump and his supporters. Fox News' Danielle Wallace reported that "Mass gatherings and shootings marked the start of the Memorial Day holiday, as Americans and government officials made sense of changing rules regarding social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic. Welcoming warming temperatures during what’s normally the start of a busy summer tourism season, hundreds of boaters came out Sunday in droves on the Charleston Harbor in South Carolina for a massive Memorial Day weekend parade in support of President Trump. It happened as South Carolina, more than any other state in the nation, has largely lifted lockdown restrictions that had caused public life for most Americans to come to a monthslong standstill."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cleared restaurants to reopen at 50 percent capacity.

Helicopter video shared by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office showed hundreds crowding the boardwalk, with rowdy partygoers drinking and dancing before shots rang out and officers arrived at the scene.

“We got slammed. Disney is closed, Universal is closed. Everything is closed, so where did everybody come with the first warm day with 50 percent opening? Everybody came to the beach,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a press conference on Sunday, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

And, at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, a popular resort spot, hundreds of partygoers packed bars and crowded pool parties on Memorial Day weekend, the Daily Mail reported.





In several photos, a sign that read “Please Practice Social Distancing: 6 Ft. Apart” is seen ironically hung from a balcony as people were seen drinking and couples kissing crammed into the pool below.

It appears the photos were taken at Redhead Lakeside Grill and Yacht Club in Osage Beach at Lake of the Ozarks, KSDK reported, though some social media users mistakenly tagged the sign's location at the nearby Shady Gators bar.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson began lifting a stay-at-home order earlier this month. Other videos that went viral on social media showed a packed “Zero Ducks Given” pool party at Backwater Jack’s bar closeby. Live music started up later in the evening, as festivities continued.

“This is one of our big weekends. Everyone knows that," Osage Beach Mayor John Olivarri said Monday in response to the viral images, according to KSDK. "So, if people made the conscientious decision to come down here and to participate at whatever level they elect to participate, they have made that decision.”

“Are we going to make everybody happy because we are open? Probably not,” the mayor continued. “Do I feel bad that our businesses have opened up and giving our employees the opportunity to go back into work and feed their families? Absolutely not.”

Will he feel bad when his employees and their families are in the hospital or in their graves? I wonder when the U.S. death toll will be ten times what it was yesterday-- that would be a million, in case any Trumpists run across this page-- and the armed forces have no choice but to start shooting the revelers and disease spreaders. Meanshwile, join the 700 people enjoying the Charleston MAGA Boat Parade. "Video shared of the parade showed posters, signs and flags on display, including one placard that read: 'If we followed rules, we'd still be British. Liberty is essential.'... It wasn’t the only MAGA boat parade held over the holiday weekend. Lara Trump, a senior campaign adviser who is also President Trump’s daughter-in-law, posted an Instagram video showing a large boat parade in her hometown, Wrightsville Beach, N.C."

In Florida, the Volusia County Beach Safety Director Ray Manchester said some 300 people were rescued by lifeguards on Saturday, adding that “every part” of the 47-mile shoreline “was full.”

Related to the shooting on the Daytona Beach boardwalk, Police Chief Craig Capri said two people were shot and four others were injured by shrapnel. Gunfire rang out in a crowd of hundreds, believed to be encouraged to come to the boardwalk by a man seen on helicopter video tossing cash to partygoers from an SUV.

What would a holiday weekend in Trumpland be without a random mass shooting or two? Other "Trumpsters," reported Will Sommer for the Daily Beast "are already revolting and COVID contact tracing. Trumpanzee allies "allies in conservative media have a new villain in the coronavirus fight: contact tracing, the rigorous efforts to track the virus’s spread that public health experts say is essential to safely restarting society. Fox News host Laura Ingraham devoted much of her show Thursday night to raising questions about contact tracing, the process where interviewers try to figure out who has been exposed to the virus by literally figuring out whom the infected had contact with. As a Fox News chyron warned that contact tracing should 'concern all Americans,' Ingraham claimed that calls for more contact tracers were just an 'excuse' to keep businesses closed, and compared being interviewed by a contact tracer to being groped by a Transportation Security Administration agent. 'Instead of rummaging through your luggage, these contact tracers will be prying through the most intimate details of your life,' Ingraham said."

A wide range of public health officials and experts have insisted that the country needs to vastly expand contact tracing, with one Johns Hopkins study calling for the hiring of at least 100,000 additional contact tracers. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that coronavirus deaths will “of course” increase without additional tracing and testing. Workplace contact tracing is included in the White House’s own reopening plan.

But Ingraham isn’t alone on the right in sowing doubts about contact tracing. Conservative columnists Andy and John Schlafly—best known as the sons of late right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly—co-authored a column at Townhall.com criticizing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) for budgeting nearly $300 million for contact tracing. The Schlaflys laid out a dystopian vision of contact tracing, comparing it to a “dark episode in the history of the communist Soviet Union” and claiming that contact tracing could be used to separate children from infected parents.

They even imagined contact tracing details being used to embarrass Republican candidates.

“The real goal of the contact tracing is to use COVID-19 as a pretext to monitor the whereabouts of every American, perhaps through our smartphones, and take away our liberties,” the Schlaflys wrote. “Republican political candidates will be tracked and leaks of their private information to the media would be inevitable under this scheme, while Democrats such as Joe Biden are given a pass on their far greater misconduct.”

Instead, the Schlaflys called for Abbott to flood the state with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that’s become a darling of Trump supporters as a potential coronavirus treatment-- even as clinical studies suggest it has no effect on the virus and actually increases mortality.

“The $295 million that Abbott is spending on contact tracing could have purchased HCQ treatments for half of the entire State of Texas, to reopen the state without the need for oppressive monitoring,” the Schlaflys wrote.

Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for conservative Newsmax TV, which is run by a close Trump confidant, compared contact tracing to “mandatory vaccination” and 5G towers, which conspiracy theorists have claimed spread coronavirus.

Pro-Trump activist Tom Fitton, the head of conservative activist group Judicial Watch, put contact tracing on a list of his coronavirus grievances, declaring: “I’m done with it.”

...[M]uch of the fearmongering about contact tracing seems to be driven by ignorance of what it actually is. Failed Republican congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, whose call to “#FireFauci” Trump retweeted in April, has urged her fans to not get tested for COVID-19. She also appears to misunderstand contact tracing, claiming that contact tracers go through phone “contact” lists, rather than in-person contacts.

“I don’t want people to get tested, because I don’t want to be in their phone, in their contact list, and if you guys are all following me on Twitter and following me on YouTube, then I’m probably going to be in your contact list,” Tesoriero told her fans in a video. “So I would prefer not to be there. They specifically said if they find one person, then they’re going to make sure they call all of that person’s contacts, whether they have 5,000 contacts or 5 contacts. And I really don’t feel like being called, I want to get off the grid of this system.”

On her Thursday night show, Ingraham positioned herself as perhaps conservative media’s leading contact tracing skeptic. But her guests went even further than her, with Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman adopting what was meant to be a German or Russian accent to imitate a contact tracing interviewer.

Ingraham guest Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, claimed that contact tracing meant that the “French revolution is attacking the American revolution.” Ingraham agreed, comparing contact tracers to radical French revolutionaries.

“The Jacobins, they’re back,” she said.

So will the weekend's holiday from social distancing make the Second Wave stronger and more lethal-- even for people being careful and staying home. Probably. The U.S. crossed 1.7 million cases Monday and 100,000 deaths. States that Trump won in 2016 with catastrophic cases per million-- and rising rapidly-- include:

• Nebraska- 6,387
• Pennsylvania- 5,654
• Iowa- 5,571
• Michigan- 5,495
• South Dakota- 5,184
• Indiana- 4,711
• Mississippi- 4,522
• Georgia- 4,088
• North Dakota- 3,224
• Kansas- 3,131
• Tennessee- 3,017
• Alabama- 3,056
• Wisconsin- 2,677
• Utah- 2,618
• Florida- 2,409 (fake numbers alert)
• Arizona- 2,275
• Missouri- 2,025
• Arkansas- 1,998
• South Carolina- 1,977
• Texas- 1,955

In way of comparison, the worst hit foreign countries' cases per million include Brazil (1,732), Russia (2,422), Spain (6,042), the U.K. (3,849), Italy (3,806), France (2,803), and Germany (2,157). CNN was wondering how badly many Americans letting down their guard over the weekend would hurt the national efforts to control the pandemic. "Crowds," reported Christina Maxouris, "packed beaches in Florida, Maryland, Georgia, Virginia and Indiana over the Memorial Day weekend-- many venturing out without masks and others failing to keep their distance even as officials highlighted the continued importance of both in order to prevent another surge of infections. It wasn't just the beaches. Pictures posted on social media showed mostly unmasked people crowded together at ACE Speedway in Elon, North Carolina, on Saturday. 'We're tired of being stuck in the house. I'm not afraid of this virus one bit,' spectator Becky Woosley told CNN affiliate WGHP."

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said the state is now experiencing a "second peak."

Hutchinson said the first peak saw 160 cases in one day followed by a "deep dip." On Saturday, there were 163 new cases of Covid-19 in Arkansas.

Coronavirus cases are trending upward in Alabama. Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Monday morning that he thinks the early easing of restrictions in his state has given people "a false sense of security."

"What we're seeing is kind of a split community where you have people who believe this is over and have decided they're going to get back to their normal way of life and they're willing to take the risk," Reed said on CNN. "What they're not considering is the risk they're posing to others when they do not see some of the symptoms in themselves."

As health officials warn the deadly virus isn't yet contained, local leaders across the country are working to enforce regulations put in place for parks, stores, bars and restaurants that have reopened.

"They're willing to take the risk?" With my family's life?

Re-Opening by Nancy Ohanian