To Beach or Not to Beach? That Really Isn’t the Question for #ReOpen Protesters.
For a select group of people anything relaxing social separation won’t be enough.
Protesters made a fuss in Pacific Beach and Encinitas over the weekend, even after the Phase One relaxing of restrictions was announced, subject to the decisions about beach access by individual cities. They couldn’t be bothered by masks or the proximity of potential carriers.
There’s a reason for this madness that goes beyond a lack of empathy. First, the sort-of good news...
The weather is going to be Californiaistic this week, so here’s what the rest of us need to know:
San Diego County has reopened the Pacific Ocean. It is up to the individual cities along the coast to decide about what will happen on the beach next to the ocean.
For residents of San Diego City, this means swimming, surfing, single person paddling and kayaking are allowed in the Pacific. Waterways defined as bays are restricted to paddling and kayaking.
Boardwalks, piers, parking lots, and Fiesta Island will remain off-limits. Walking and running are the only activities permitted on beaches, according to the Mayor’s office.
Multiple surveys show roughly four out of five Americans support social distancing restrictions; most think they should continue, at least through the month of May.
That sentiment is as close to a consensus as anything I’ve seen in the USA over the past decades. Despite a continuing effort by the President’s allies to undermine the efforts of public health agencies and most politicians, Americans get it.
And that approval rate is matched among people who are already suffering financially from the economic shutdown. There is widespread concern among employees about the dangers of reopening many businesses.
Hell, even the executives of large companies understand why this unpleasantness is occuring, even as they angle for White House support for exempting their companies from legal liability should they reopen.
Looking at the numbers, as research to be published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis shows, there is a net positive value to the economy of $5.2 Trillion (with a T!) of lockdowns compared to business-as-usual under the most likely future scenarios. (Different plans of relaxing restrictions do provide alternative dollar figures.)
As Scott Lewis at Voice of San Diego observed over the weekend, logistically speaking it is damn near impossible to reopen much of our economy without answering questions about what happens to schools, daycare, camps and the other institutions where parents park their kids.
Schools and functional daycare is the absolute backbone of the economy. Nothing works without it. We didn’t start “working from home;” we found ways to manage at home. Not only does school provide crucial supervision of youths during the day but it creates a creative class and workforce. We cannot continue to function, even at this level, without options for our children. Many of us not only relied on schools but on important after-school programs and summer camps and everything about functional parenting life. No schools, no nothing. We’re definitely not going to any damn spas.
So, if the people want to keep on keeping on, businesses aren’t sure, it makes the most sense financially, and we haven’t a clue about what happens to children next, why the hell is the clamor to #ReopenAmerica such a big deal?
There multiple answers to that question going beyond a desire to return to the familiar routines and officials seeking to make policy based on political aspirations.
I am sure that many people in business for themselves (particularly in retail) are looking at declining or non-existent bank balances and hoping for a reopening as the path to solvency. A plurality of small businesses are doomed already, and that number grows with each day of closure.
Other enterprises will never be the same again. Colleges in California are looking at a double whammy of less tuition income and a decrease in State support. I’d be willing to bet that just about everything related to tourism will take years to rebuild and the fundamentals of their businesses are going to be vastly different.
(I think San Diegans should be grateful that we’re not on the hook for a convention center expansion.)
The really big issue involved in reopening the country has nothing to do with dollars and restoration of our routines at least for those making the most noise.
On a meta level the pandemic has increased political, economic and social stresses, both domestically and internationally.
Questions about inequality, the aspirations of the middle class, structural racism, healthcare and education have arisen that are not easily answered. This is why we’ve seen Republicans (and some Democrats) who normally couldn’t be bothered with these issues be willing to throw vast sums of money into the social safety net. It shouldn’t need to be said, but the friends and family contributions to the already wealthy were conveniently buried in the rescue legislation.
The disruption of trade has accelerated nationalist tendencies and weakened global cooperation. The victor in all this will likely be China (despite their initial behavior) in large part because of the “every man for themselves” sentiment among First World nations. Any remaining moral high ground occupied by the United States has vanished amid the Trumpian tantrums.
Regardless of how fast we open or not reopen, things will be different. I hear there’s at least a partial cure for what ails us coming on November 3rd.
On a micro -- and I mean very micro-- level, the noise and fury over reopening is about cultural warfare. It’s about racism. It’s about the patriarchy. It’s about authoritarianism. It’s about those who believe a destructive vanguard is what is needed to achieve their goals, whether it’s an aparthied state or a theocracy leading to the rapture.
Dig down past the gawkers and naivety of the protesters we’re all been hearing about and you’ll find some very, very unsavory characters. Though they have wrapped themselves in Trumpian apparel, this fuss is really about a fundamentalist nihilism.
They don’t care about the collateral damage they are capable of wreaking, nor do they believe in society moving forward (in whatever the direction it was before all this mess).
The core leadership of this rabble, both formally and informally, includes supporters of The Boogaloo* and/or the anti-vaxxer crowd. Both share the goal of ending government and societal institutions and replacing them with… something else.
The consensus between these factions exists with the understanding that nothing new can be created until the existing order is destroyed.
From the Huffington Post:
A report published Thursday by the watchdog group the Tech Transparency Project found 125 Facebook groups devoted to the idea of the “boogaloo,” a far-right term used to describe what they believe is an inevitable civil war in the U.S. Members discuss weapons, combat medicine, and how to develop explosives, the report says. One group even shared a document detailing how to disrupt U.S. government supply lines and discussing the possible need to assassinate government officials.
These groups have proliferated during the pandemic, according to the report, as right-wing extremists grow more agitated over lockdown orders aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, measures many militia and “patriot” groups view as the oppressive maneuverings of a tyrannical government.
Over 60% of the groups were created in just the last three months, according to the report. The 125 groups have nearly 73,000 members, though it’s unclear how many individuals may belong to multiple groups.
About 50% of the groups’ members have joined within the last 30 days.
Walk back through the connections and administrators of the various Facebook groups sponsoring the “Reopen” protests and you’ll find a very unsavory collection of characters.
From the Guardian:
America’s “anti-vaxxer movement” would pose a threat to national security in the event of a “pandemic with a novel organism”, an FBI-connected non-profit research group warned last year, just months before the global coronavirus pandemic began.
In a research paper put out by the little-known in-house journal of InfraGard – a national security group affiliated with the FBI – experts warned the US anti-vaccine movement would also be connected with “social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns” orchestrated by the Russian government.
Since the virus hit America, anti-vaccination activists and some sympathetic legislators around the country have led or participated in protests against stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of the deadly virus. More than 50,000 people have died in the US.
Note: InfraGard has been criticized by civil liberties groups from its origins as a security national entity and links to the FBI.
https://twitter.com/KagroX/status/1254796964039925760?s=20
Right wing extremist groups like American Front are among those calling for demonstrations on May 1st in San Diego (at Petco), Los Angeles (City Hall), Orange County (Huntington Pier), and Sacramento (Capitol Building).
Here's a tid bit from the progressive oriented San Diego Protests FB page:
It has come to my attention that one of the Open CA protests happening this Friday, in downtown, is being organized by a local white nationalist group, currently going by the name Southern California American Guard. These are the same guys who did the Patriot Picnics in Chicano Park, and are former members of the Proud Boys, and Vanguard America, and are also the same ones that assaulted me and others on several occasions.
The President’s new favorite “news site” OANN, has been cheerleading the efforts locally.
Residents of San Diego are demanding an end to virus-related shutdowns in California. On Sunday, hundreds of people took to the streets of Pacific Beach to call for a quicker reopening of the economy in San Diego and across the U.S.
According to the protesters, economic lockdowns are destroying the travel and tourism industry in their city. Many also said the lockdowns violate their constitutional rights as Americans.
“My question is this: why is the news media so suddenly interested and intensely focused on pathogenic respiratory illness when this is not only not new, but the numbers of the story that they’re covering pale in comparison to what influenza does to us annually in this world?” asked Kelly Neill, an attendee of the ‘Liberate San Diego’ protest.
Facebook has taken down some of the most extreme event pages, but there can be no doubt from what I've seen the goal for May 1st is mayhem.
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https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1254800754545774597?s=20
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1254756982822768640?s=20
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Lead Photo credits: (Grim Reaper) Daniel Uhlfelder, ICU (Kristine Koser),
PB Demonstration (Travis View)