Seems to me it’s basically a rural urban divide. The GOP is basically a rural party. They don’t give a shit about cities as they lose all of them.
In some ways, it is sort of rational even. Rural areas are likely safest to open before urban ones.
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My best guess is they think they are completely fucked in November if they shut things down longer because of who their voters are. Mostly science denying morons. It isn’t like Trump would pick off many Dem voters at this point no matter what he does so the alternative is to just rile up your base as much as possible by making Covid a partisan issue. Its basically quadrupling down on the Us vs. Them mentality Trump has used all along.
Of course it’s stupid but politically they are backed into a corner and admitting science is real now has some risky consequences for the GOP.
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Rural is starting to feel this. All those great rural jerbs like prisons and meat packaging just breed this thing. Then it will go to their at risk fat family and olds.
People never got their guards up vs Covid or are letting them down now. It will be hit or miss but I fully expect to see many of these 5,000 population towns lose 1-2% of their population. Virtually guaranteeing that everyone will be personally impacted.
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The GOP is all-in on Trump. There’s no way they can repudiate him and survive, so they have to go in the direction he leads. If you had to make decisions with the constraint that you can’t contradict Trump, what would you do?
Republicans are also working off of the idea that the economy needs to be back to normal by November for them to win and treating all losing scenarios as catastrophic. They need to gamble to have a shot at winning.
And the longer you lock things down, the more justification there is for expanding the welfare state. They don’t want to be put through public negotiations where they are working to deny benefits and bailouts to working class folks who can’t survive without help.
And some of them, quite frankly, completely agree with the gun-wielding protesters.
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There’s a long list of counties in southwest Georgia have lost 0.1-0.2% of their populations already. I doubt any metro Atlanta counties are even in the top 10 in Georgia in terms of rate of confirmed infections.
Surely part of it is that it’s not just the Republican base that is 100% fact resistant and living in a fantasy world. The actual party and officials are likely infected with the same commitment to ignorance.
The GOP is also becoming accustomed to getting free rolls from the eDems. They know from experience that they can retcon any bad outcome to blame libruls. If Republican politicians obviously and gleefully sacrifice thousands of people, their supporters will waste no time creating a fictional narrative to explain why the deaths are the fault of Hillary or immigrants or China or whatever.
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Bingo. Talked with my wife about this exactly yesterday. We both have to hold each other accountable when we see people out doing fun shit. We apartment overlooks the Lily testing line, so it’s a bit of a sobering snap back to reality which will help.
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Yea the Deplorables are 
all in. My brother in law posted these memes on Facebook in the past 24 hours. They are beyond help. Oh and he’s 68 year old, with diabetes and hypertension.
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Just worked 3 straight nights as a nurse at a Georgia hospital.
The census (number of patients we have) has been unusually low. Most of the time, at any given moment we’re 80-95% full. Lately, even on the Covid isolation floor, we’ve been more like 50-75% full.
The only explanation I have is that the pandemic has kept people away from hospitals unless they’re having a stroke or heart attack.
So I’m enjoying it while it lasts. But given our elected leadership, I’m really worried what the next 21-49 days brings.
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Interesting. I heard similar from a friend where I live. We have cancelled all elective procedures so a lot of doctors and nurses are actually bored right now.
We’ve had temporary layoffs in healthcare in NH. My sister is a nurse and is currently laid off.
With healthcare staffing the way it is, they assured me when I was hired that I could work as much as I want to.
Over the last two weeks, they’ve been sending nurses home, but only if they were already in overtime.
However, when the census is high and staffing is low, they’ll offer incentives for people to pick up, so it is what it is.
Such a weird takeaway.
Not sure what culture these beta cucks grew up in but in mine masks have always represented being bad ass.
Of course this is the same reason trump doesn’t wear a mask. He thinks it makes him look weak but not wearing one just makes him look like a coward.
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If we reopen the fed only has to make it rain on billionaires and the plebes get nothing, even though unemployment will still be at 30% or whatever. I really think it’s that simple. These astroturfed donks are just providing cover
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What’s this I’m seeing in the derposphere last 24 hours about the CDC revising COVID deaths downward to under 40K? I assume this is some FNC-inspired mangling of the real story?
This looks to be correct per the JHU map. Other hotspots on a per capita basis that aren’t getting a ton of press are some Black Belt counties in Mississippi (for obvious reasons), and some stuff around the Four Corners, which I assume is probably due to Native Americans we’ve left to fend for themselves.
Being a doctor in Russia doesn’t seem like an enviable position. Not only are they on the wrong side of the curve in regards to the pandemic, now they have to worry about learning to fly unassisted if they speak up about insufficient supplies.
You know tRUmp is salivating at the idea of being able to order these things to happen.
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