Time to pour one out for the Pour House

We had one of the first outbreaks in the country. Deaths are higher in states that saw early action, because we didn't really know what we were doing at the point: we were short on PPE and it was impossible to get more, we didn't know the best ways to treat patients, remdesivir wasn't in use, etc.

The states that didn't see as many cases until later benefited from the lessons learned the hard way by states like MA, NY, and NJ. The uncontrolled outbreaks in our states, devastating as they were, never got even close to herd immunity-level ubiquity; it was our lockdowns that put on the brakes and eventually turned the tide. States like FL didn't need to lock down fully in response to an early, undetected outbreak, and when their outbreaks eventually came, they had had the benefit of much more advance warning and much clearer guidance for how to handle it than we had.

The difference between FL and MA isn't that we're liberal idiots and they aren't, it's that they simply had the good fortune not to suffer a Biogen conference in March. To the extent they've suffered less economic harm due to lockdowns, it's because they didn't need lockdowns as much as we did. They made a choice that was simply not available to us.

And if you're fixated on the unemployment rate, if being liberal idiots is to blame for our temporarily-highest-in-the-nation-during-a-pandemic rate, you also need to give our liberalism credit for the among-the-lowest-in-the-nation rate we had for years right through March. Can't have it both ways.

Remember when the patriots had to orchestrate a covert operation to fly a private jet to New York to procure medical supplies for our hospitals after federal agencies confiscated them? Remember when mass national gaurd caravans had to escort those same supplies when they landed back in mass to prevent those supplies from again being confiscated by trumps federal agents? Remember when trump openly critized blue states and pledged to withhold federal aid at the height of the pandemic? Remember when you and others like you whined about the shutdowns and were fine with the death toll because it was just old people? Now you suddenly care about the death rate because it's convenient to your narrative?

Yes Trump is directly responsible for the initial deaths in mass and its only through the herculean effort by our state government, medical personnel and scientists who openly defied him that we flattened the curve exactly as predicted and now have one of the lowest infection rates in the country. You can pin every single one of those deaths on Trump, every one. It's the job of president to look out for the American people, all of them, and trump has shown time and time again he is only concerned about the ones that will vote for him. That's your hero, a man who would gladly see anyone who doesn't lick his boots die a slow suffocating death by a preventable disease while he plays golf.

T.C's Lounge was the dive bar on Haviland St.