I attended.
I left before it started.
I didn't feel comfortable. It looked like a super-spreader event.
It was a GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Forum. There were 110 people in the ballroom, shaking hands and leaning in, talking loud near each other to be heard amid the buzz of competing conversations. It was a good crowd of politically engaged Republicans. They were at a country club lobby and meeting room to listen to seven candidates for governor make their cases.
I spent 10 minutes total at the event. I am vaccinated and boosted, but I don't feel invulnerable. People get breakthrough cases, then spread COVID, sometimes to people more fragile than themselves. My longtime accountant, a fellow Rotarian, is vaccinated and boosted. He just caught COVID and gave it to his wife. Both are OK, but I considered it a warning. It could happen to me.
My county had 424 new cases of COVID yesterday and we are having a surge. The official number for Jackson County is 1,167 cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days. People are infectious for about seven days. This means at least 1.2% of local citizens are infectious. The real number is far more than that, of course. Some vaccinated people are infectious and never know it. They aren't included in the statistics. Other people have symptoms, and maybe take a home test, and learn they are positive. Why bother telling the county health people you have COVID? They were infectious for a while before they tested. Who knows if they isolate? A fellow who helps me at my farm got COVID, and his wife and three preschool children all got it. They never told anyone. COVID is out there.
As a group, Republican partisans are vaccine and mask skeptical, and many are adamant and proud of it. They have bumper stickers to say so, like the one on the car parked next to mine. This is a group of extravert activists, happily attending an event where they protest mask and vaccine mandates. They did not seem one bit concerned about getting or spreading COVID. That made me concerned.
I was wearing two masks; a tight fitting K-95 mask with a surgical mask over it. Masks like that protect others but don't do much to protect me. I wanted out. While leaving, I noticed an older woman wearing a N-95 mask. There were two of us!
I approached her. I said, "Hello, I see you are wearing a mask."
"Yes. I have lung cancer," she said. "I am trying not to get COVID on top of the cancer." I nodded and hoped my eyes above my mask showed empathy.
"It is inconsiderate for people not to wear masks," she said.
I nodded and said, "Well, they are doing what they want. It's a free country and we are free to leave."
When I attend events like this as a "political tourist," I try not to say much or reveal my own politics. I want to hear what people think when they aren't getting cues from me. But at this candidate forum that was impossible. I was sending a clear body language message with my masks.
I wish I had left sooner. Omicron is in the air. The event looked like those "chicken pox parties" people used to have. Everyone here was sharing the air. Probably some people were vaccinated, probably some were not. Who knows? Either way, candidates and crowd were back to normal. Maybe one gets COVID, maybe not; maybe one spreads it, maybe not. Who knows? The hospitals are full? Oh, well. Quit fussing. Get on with our lives. Don't let people tell you to do what you don't want to do. Seven GOP candidates for governor were on display and their faces were making clear their position on COVID.
Head's up to skeptics: This may be a winning political strategy.
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9 comments:
This is quite simple. Republicans are responsible for the continuing pandemic. Witness the stunning hypocrisy of blaming the Biden administration for failing to control the epidemic, as if there's some magic bullet, while refusing vaccinations and other public health protocols, including totally reasonable mandates.
This is to their political advantage, never mind the collateral damage to their own supporters.
Now we are hearing about "living with COVID". While the current variant is less dangerous, there's still the risk of a more lethal one. I'd rather see us eradicate it, rather than give up for political expediency.
Get vaccinated, wear a mask, practice prudent socializing, especially Republican events.
While Peter observed Oregon Republicans flaunting their contempt for science at a country club, their cult leader was in Arizona with an adoring crowd, flaunting their contempt for facts. I used to wonder how such a party could attract anyone capable of rational thought. Then I realized: it doesn’t. It’s living proof that you shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of ignorance.
Thanks, Pete. As that great American, George Carlin, used to say, "Half the world has less than average intelligence." Of course, he also used to say, "I don't vote. If I did, I'd have nothing to complain about."
Those of us with open minds are learning something about human nature: many people are more risk-tolerant than those of us who live careful lives and think a lot about what to do next. People in that group are not especially eager to be told what to do by people in the risk-averse group. Pushed hard enough, they raise either literal middle fingers, or giant orange metaphorical ones like He Who Must Not Be Re-elected.
Shame, blame, and denunciation have not worked and will not work. Insanity = doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
Human nature is what we have to work with; as it is, not how we would like it to be. Hopefully at some point everyone will be done with their tantrums and we can move on to figuring out something affective.
On one hand, I wish you had been able to stick around, as I value your input on various candidates.
On the other, I'm glad you got out of there safely, at least for now.
There's another aspect to insanity: being a danger to oneself or others. That pretty much defines the Trumplican Party. About the only thing crazier would be imagining we could or should compromise with such people.
Let’s all go crash the night on the beach. Have a bonfire. They say a tsunami happened way down there in what’s-a-call-it. And you better watch out!!! Boo! Don’t know, don’t care. Who brought the keg? Hey, Check out the body on that babe or is that a guy? OMG ,Pass the joint.
Ralph,
In 1986 there was an earthquake in Alaska that generated tsunami warnings down the West Coast. My wife and I were living on Orcas Island at the time.
We had no idea how big the tsunami would be and we were living right on the island’s coast, so we tuned into an AM radio station that was broadcasting from the beach at Cape Flattery. We figured if they reported a huge tsunami hitting there, we would have time to jump in the car and drive up on top of a local mountain before the tsunami came down the strait of Juan de Fuca and hit our location.
We thought the radio reporter on the beach was either very brave or very foolish or both. We were amazed to hear him reporting that people were flocking to the beach and having a great big drunk tsunami party. With bonfires. When we heard the transmission cut out we were going to be on our way up the mountain.
As it happened, the “tsunami” was just a couple of feet high at the cape. The reporter and the partiers survived. About an hour later we heard a bump from down on the dock as something like a 6 inch wave went by.
You may have thought you were making up a satirical story. But it actually happened. Probably not the only time.
There are many in this great land of ours who fool you by walking upright…
The republicans gathering put a lot of others at risk, namely people who had to work to serve them.
But since when have republicans cared about anyone else?
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