Giantaxe

Some chickens are going to come home to roost because of people like this. Along with Bolsanaro's craziness in Brasil, the US seems singularly ill-equipped to deal with a pandemic. This is going to run and run until there's a reliable vaccine. And even then the anti-vaxxers will be out in force to tell us it's all a plot by Bill Gates, George Soros etc for world control.

zzrmark

Mask? What's a mask? The problem with Floridaman/woman is that there are far too many of them and it's so bloody warm that we're in the second day of a heat advisory, which always brings the crazies out in droves.
Go to my local edge-of-town Publix and just about everyone masks up, last week went into our old one nearer the middle of town, smack in the middle of sub-division hell, and it was pretty much just me and the staff masked up, cov-idiots everywhere. We're doomed, I say, all doomed...

petitefrancaise

"cov-idiots"! love it

ddsrph

Their fearless leader has told them the pandemic is over. The only people in their mind wearing masks are liberal never trumpers or worse, communist.

Pulaski

Don't tell me that that is the first time you have heard "covidiots"?

RICH

Republiots. Am l on to something😁

zzrmark

Republikkkans is a better fit.

Mic1

Braindead individuals.

robtuck

Oddly, the USA was number one in a pre-Covid assessment for Pandemic Preparedness

I presume Obama didn't give Trump the Pin Code to the safe that houses the documents. Deep State!!

zzrmark

It was? According to whom?

caretaker

Depends on who you want to believe...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=USA+was+nu...tb=v1-1&ia=web

Giantaxe

The US was 1 and the UK 2 in that assessment. That hasn't worked out too well in retrospect! Back when this started I thought the US would have a low death rate but would have a longer lasting mess than a lot of countries. But I didn't realize quite how much the US would be screwed by the behaviour of its own citizens. If I'd read about the 1918 flu epidemic and the mask protests back then I likely would have.

scrubbedexpat091

People don't like to be told what to do, especially in the US, and some groups like to protest and will protest anything really.

Canada is marginally better, but my observations are the more conservative leaning one is, the less likely to wear a mask or cooperate and call those who do wear a mask and follow the rules sheeple.

Pulaski

Agreed, the parallels are uncanny, and you could take some of the newspaper reports from the time of the flu pandemic and with very little editing would describe precisely what has been happening in 2020.

I have come to realize over the past half dozen years or so, that the US operates a former of democracy that is little more than "managed anarchy" - the federal and state government is barely able to control what happens, and they do the best they can, with controls over businesses and transactions, but the population at large often get away with "doing their own thing", which is one reason that gun ownership is so common - I live in a county of several hundred square miles and at night there are only a handful of deputies providing police coverage, so if anyone broke in and I called 911, it could easily be ten minutes or more before a deputy could get to my home. So, so long as people don't cause too many ripples, the city/county, state, and federal government largely leave people alone.

For example, while there is a building permit and inspection process for home improvements and major repairs, I know from personal experience that you can entirely ignore the process and it is unlikely to be noticed even when you sell your home and it is subject to inspection. To wit, I am currently replacing part of the bathroom floor which had sagged where a previous owner had removed about 5ft of a main floor joist. He had not used joist hangers to properly secure the cross member he installed, used a cross member that had, for some reason been partially cut through (and fell out in two pieces when I removed it! ) and used 2x4's to "support" the part of the floor previously supported by the 2x8 joist! Obviously this would never have passed a code inspection! ..... So while I am rebuilding the floor supports with appropriately sized joist timbers, and more of them, and using proper joist hangers, I am also flying under the radar and not getting my work inspected.

zzrmark

Working on properties here I have noticed that most older people and a fair few younger ones have absolutely no qualms about picking up a big hammer and a saw and making a complete dog's dinner of their property without having a clue about what they are doing. Only yesterday my wife was telling me about some people she knew who had moved into a trailer in SC and made it unliveable by knocking out walls that weren't supposed to be removed, I rudely interrupted her half way through and said that I'd already heard the story about her brother in law's brother but turns out this was a different trailer wrecker, f**kwits, f**kwits everywhere!!!