Let’s end the coronavirus blame games

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Over the summer, as COVID cases began to rise from their mid-year lows, it became popular to blame Republicans for fueling the pandemic. The argument was that COVID had become a scourge of the red state due to lower rates of mask-wearing and vaccination – as well as high doses of vaccine misinformation – in places that have touched Donald Trump a lot.

It even seemed to be true for a while, with states like Florida, Alabama and Louisiana suffering from a huge increase in cases. But the virus has had a way to make fun of us all.

Take Vermont, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country and where Joe Biden won 66% of the vote. Due to the delta variant’s vigorous attack on even the relatively small number of unvaccinated Vermonters, the state has seen one of the strongest recent outbreaks of COVID, with hospitalizations up 24% over two weeks. In Santa Fe County, New Mexico, where Biden won with 76% and 74% of the population is fully vaccinated, hospitalizations have increased by 40%.

You will find similar trends in Hennepin County, Minnesota (Biden, 70%), where vaccination rates are high; and in Wayne County, Michigan (Biden, 68%), where vaccination rates are relatively low.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and other Red states, cases have plummeted after earlier flares, leaving plenty of immunity.

We’ll see how long things stay that way, now that the omicron variant has reached US shores. But here’s a plea: let’s end the COVID-sponsored blame games. They are unnecessary, divisive, and stupid.

Consider the COVID account settlement record to date:

COVID is mainly a problem in big cities! But then it became a tragedy for rural America. (And yes, it was I who pleaded guilty to a bad argument at the start of the pandemic, when I thought population density would be the main driver of transmission.)

The Laboratory Leak Theory Is Right-Wing Racist Conspiracy Talk! Uh, except the argument is far from settled on whether it’s true or not.

Andrew Cuomo is a model of crisis management! But it then turned out that the disgraced former governor was guilty of one of the worst policy decisions of the first months of the pandemic, when he forced New York nursing homes to take back patients who had been hospitalized with COVID and then tried to cover up the blunder.

Ron DeSantis is a model of crisis management! The governor of Florida did, in fact, do well in the early months of the crisis, when he focused state resources on protecting the elderly, only to then preside over a gigantic spike in cases.

Trump is responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths that could have been prevented if only someone else had been in the White House! But now Biden has presided over even more deaths, not that anyone should blame him for.

Anti-vax myths are fueled by right-wing liars! But then people like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Newsmax’s Christopher Ruddy urged people to get vaccinated, while most of the vaccine misinformation on social media came from characters like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Rizza Islam of the Nation of Islam and other alternative medicine charlatans with mostly unimaginable political views.

Germany is a model of intelligent consensual action in public health! But vaccination rates among Germans are still relatively low, distrust of the government is depressing, and cases are skyrocketing.

Sweden is a model of common sense when it comes to containment! Well, the Swedes, who have avoided the blockages, have fared relatively better than Spain or Britain, who have been blocked on several occasions. But, as Bloomberg’s Justin Fox points out, the Swedes fared just as well as their Scandinavian neighbors, who took more stringent precautions.

The list goes on. There were those on the right who predicted the end of the pandemic based on expected collective immunity thresholds. There were those on the left who predicted an end based on vaccination rates. Nature – on the one hand viral and on the other hand human – embarrassed them both. If the omicron variant resembles the delta variant in its transmissibility, that will embarrass them again.

Here are some modest pleas for this holiday season.

Let’s put our crystal balls away and shake our snow globes instead. We have about as much foresight in this crisis as a snowman in a blizzard.

Let’s stop arguing that COVID is a red or blue state thing. Yes, Republican areas tend to have lower vaccination rates, but disease trends have a way of changing direction for reasons no one really understands.

Let us stop imputing bad faith or recklessness or greed to our partisan adversaries. They have loved ones who are just as at risk of infection as we are.

Let us accept that people have needs and ideas that are different from ours, whether it is because of their health, their livelihoods, or deeply rooted beliefs. Lectures, condescension and contempt are not going to change the way they think.

I have no idea what omicron will bring and have very little hope that we will be able to exercise any form of effective control over it. But that shouldn’t be more than asking that we stop being bestial to others. We are all going through the same storm.

Bret Stephens is a columnist for the New York Times.

You can send letters to the editor at [email protected].

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