Who’s responsible for Stanislaus County’s COVID surge? Hint: it’s not government
By now, you should know exactly what to do to protect yourself and your family from the ravages of COVID-19.
Sure, we’ve heard mixed messages from leadership of our country and our county. The elected leaders of both have at times chosen to politicize the pandemic, calling for unsafe and premature commerce and displaying varying degrees of contempt for mask wearing.
But messaging from U.S. and Stanislaus County public health experts has been consistent: face coverings, social distance and avoiding unwise gathering. If any of this is news to you, you’re either living in a cave or willfully ignorant.
Yes, Stanislaus leaders could do more to slow the spread. They could publicly reverse the misguided policy of looking the other way and begin actively and meaningfully enforcing public health orders among local businesses. And officials could stop stubbornly refusing to give us the common-sense tool of telling us where COVID outbreaks are happening throughout our county.
At some point, however, responsible people acknowledge that government should not and cannot control all aspects of our lives.
Government is not the boss of us. We are.
We know the formula for personal and community safety. We cannot claim that we were not adequately warned and informed.
Regular Modesto Bee readers have been served a steady diet of cautionary tales. Remember the West Modesto woman and her daughter who died four days apart, leaving grief-stricken family, in late August and early September? Remember the Ceres couple who died within hours of each other in November?
On this page on Christmas Eve, readers found a heartbreaking account of a man whose uncle insisted that the coronavirus was no worse than the flu, and that the death toll was an inflated hoax designed to deprive Americans of freedom — until his grandparents lay dying of it in the hospital.
Stories like this abound. Yet some people convince themselves it won’t happen to them, like unprotected sex with no thought of pregnancy.
It’s more than obvious that the coronavirus is not some hoax. It is real, it is dangerous and it is harming far too many of us in terms of jobs, health and life itself.
We know all of this. We know the risks. And we know that a solution in the form of vaccines is right around the corner.
But the lure of togetherness — of gathering to share love and laughter — proved too tempting for many at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The inescapable fact that people will be people will surely bring another sickening surge in coming weeks.
The coming of a new year prompts us to think about where we’ve been, where we want to go and who we want to be. Having the third-highest death rate in California —a position Stanislaus County recently found itself in — is not who we want to be. Leaving our hospitals with few ICU vacancies, and our medical staff exhausted, is no one’s aspiration.
Reducing our COVID caseload does not require more and better messaging from government. It requires personal commitment and diligence, maybe even a New Year’s resolution for better behavior and selflessness. That includes getting a vaccine shot when it’s available and offered.
How we come out of this does not depend on Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Gavin Newsom, Terry Withrow or Ted Brandvold.
It depends on us.