Are COVID Deplorables Expendable?

By Bogdan Vacarciuc @ Shutterstock.com

A state-by-state compilation of virus restrictions leads Daniel Henninger in the WSJ to conclude: Put it this way: There are exceptions, but if you want to live in a state without authoritarian impulses, your best bet is to move red.

From March (Key West shut down on St. Patrick’s Day), when the Coronavirus was in its early phase, throughout most of the summer, resistance to public-health policies of 6-foot social distancing, along with wearing masks, came mostly from the political right. Mr. Henninger claims that the latest surge of resistance has a different look – one that has produced Democratic defeats, specifically in California and New York. Nancy Pelosi’s slim majority in the House has many of her party members asking, how did that happen?

Just maybe, Covid is adding new members to the population of Democrat-frustrated deplorables.

Such as Angela Marsden, the woman in the famous viral video outside her restaurant near Los Angeles, asking why Mayor Eric Garcetti has closed her business while tents and tables are setting up across the street to feed the crew of an NBC-TV drama.

NYC – Zero Indoor Dining

But now, some governors and mayors are determined that the final burden of bailing out everyone else from Covid’s mysterious transmission is overwhelmingly on small businesses and their workers. Like the earlier deplorables, they too are apparently expendable.

On our trip back to New England from Key West, Dick and I stayed in Milford, PA, where new restrictions on inside dining coincided with our arrival. Hedging its bets, the hotel already had installed heaters on its porch and draped blankets on each socially distanced chair. Mild temps (and no wind or rain) made for a pleasant evening, but this week’s upcoming weather forecasts for the Delaware Water Gap doesn’t bode well for continued porch dining.

In New York City one stares amazed at the good-faith efforts and investments restaurant owners have made to comply with the Cuomo indoor-capacity restrictions. With minimal cash flow, they paid for construction (done in part by the city’s apparently limitless supply of Latin American carpenters) of sophisticated and attractive outdoor “dining rooms” on the edge of traffic. Then they paid for 8-foot-high propane heaters.

Where, asks Mr. Henninger, is the epidemiological study, or even opinion, that says pushing small business and their employees past the point of economic survival has to be the default policy for fighting Covid?

Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, New Mexico, Illinois, California, NY

The new resistance to Covid mitigation policies isn’t rising in (red) states. It is emerging almost entirely in the bluest states. These are the states in which acts of civil disobedience and defiance are occurring among people who don’t wear MAGA hats.

Their governors are called liberals. But perhaps liberalism’s meaning and its political support are undergoing a transition, as Covid redefines the everyday understanding of individual freedom.