Why we can’t have nice things

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Like reopened economies and schools.

Have you the seen the COVID case numbers for West Virginia? For just Monongalia County?

Our COVID cases jumped so high, so fast the governor shut down Mon County bars and Morgantown City Council issued a mandatory mask order with actual penalties.

In the first two weeks of July, Mon County had 436 new cases. (COVID-19 numbers are constantly changing, so for our purpose, we will be using the numbers from July 14, which are last confirmed numbers available at the time of this writing.) In that same time frame, West Virginia went from 2,932 confirmed cases to 4,316 — an increase of 1,384 cases. We also had four deaths in two weeks. We are now one death shy of triple digits.

Our state made national headlines for having the highest transmission rate for the coronavirus in the country.

This is what we get from a month of people refusing to wear masks in public, refusing to social distance and refusing to take basic precautions. And there is plenty of blame to go around, from the people still who believe the coronavirus is a hoax to the young people who think they’re invincible to the government officials who won’t enforce protective precautions.

If there is one thing this surge has shown us, it is that “personal responsibility” isn’t enough. Not in West Virginia anyway. When masks were “encouraged,” anecdotal evidence showed fewer than half of people out in public wore their masks. Now that masks are “mandated,” there are definitely more people wearing face coverings. But even then, cities and municipalities have had to back up Gov. Justice’s mandate with ordinances of their own, imposing penalties for noncompliance.

People rail about personal freedoms and violations of their rights, but at what point as a society did we decide someone’s right to not be inconvenienced trumped everyone else’s health and safety? When did we become so selfish?

This selfishness — this single-minded focus on our own personal comfort — is why we can’t have nice things. It’s why we can’t have a fully reopened economy. It’s why businesses are being shut down again. It’s why we can’t just send kids back to school in the fall like normal. It’s why people can’t go on vacation, or, if they do, they have to quarantine for an additional two weeks. It’s why we can’t have parties and celebrations and cookouts. It’s why some people haven’t been able to see family members or friends in months. It’s why local nursing homes had to severely restrict visitations almost immediately after finally starting to allow them again. This selfishness is why we haven’t come even close to getting back to life as “normal” and we likely won’t for months to come.

We are all capable of being better than this. From the “Don’t tread on me”-ers to the “I’m young and healthy and can’t get sick”-ers to the “It’s like the flu”-ers and every stubborn human in between, we are better than this.
Now we need to act like it.