masks help, washing your hands help, maintaining social distancing helps. there isn't an argument you can genuinely make against that. the argument you can make is the repercussions of those things. (i have 2 kids in school and remote learning fucking sucks, my wife's business she worked so hard for was shut down for months, other small businesses can't recuperate even with the minimal stimulus loans they got, people can only be told to do something for so long until they can't take it anymore, etc...)
my boss is on trump's re-election campaign and he's been the biggest advocate I know of adhering to CDC guidelines and we've done a great job at making sure covid hasn't spread more than it can. covid doesn't care what political party you belong to. if we get hit with a second wave because people are fed up or don't think masks work, all they are doing is fucking over everyone else.
You missed the point. Reporting about the pandemic - not the virus itself - doesn't care about masks, social distancing and hand washing. There is nothing you can do to stop this spread because it's artificially inflated using oversensitive PCR tests for a virus that was never even properly isolated. The language in most of the reporting is suspect as hell and almost no one points it out. The reason it's suspect is because everyone's covering their ass legally.
Look into the PCR testing method, start with NYT if you still value their reporting. Then dig up local information about testing capacity/tests per day and compare that to the daily/weekly changes in positive results. Then take that a step further and do the same in other regions of the world - you'll notice a trend emerge.
The reason places like China, New Zealand and South Korea "succeeded" isn't because they're better than the rest of the world, look up their testing capacity and how they go about reporting their cases. That's the only reason their numbers were/are low. Well, that and the obvious differences in general health. The US, however, is destroying the rest of the world on testing capacity. 2 + 2...
Israel is reported as having one of the highest testing capacities per million and what's funny about that is their numbers are more or less in line with Quebec's when adjusted - similar pop size, but twice as many positives with about
75% more tests/day (slightly higher positivity rate). Correlation is causation, I'd love to see someone prove to me I'm wrong about this.
This isn't rocket science, but I can't blame anyone for being misguided given the overwhelming flood of propaganda coming from all directions. Seriously, look into the numbers for yourself. They apply absolutely everywhere around the world. We're being treated like idiots and after three years of political garbage that apparently half the world bought into I can't blame the sick bastards for thinking they could pull the wool over eyes with this scam, too.
Trump's been holding large rallies all over the country for months. Where are all the crazy explosions in cases, all the hospitalizations and all the dead bodies? The "super spreader event" that apparently got him and everyone around him saw even the most vulnerable targets come out of it fine.
This virus does not warrant the extreme measures that have scared people shitless and harmed businesses. Go yell at your elected leaders or put me on the phone with them and I'll do it for you. The elected leaders here are too scared to debate the matter with the public, lord knows I'd drop everything to do it if the opportunity came up.