COLUMN: Stepping out of sheltering-in-place

Though Georgia is beyond the initial shelter-in-place order, my family will be staying at home a while longer. I have been pretty lax in wearing a mask out, largely because others have been wearing masks, but even I am now more frequently wearing one. Why? Idiots.

This past weekend, I was turning into our neighborhood on Bass Road and saw a lady in a Mercedes who had an ice cream cone in one hand, her cell phone in her other hand, and her face mask pulled beneath her chin. She was driving.

Idiots are going to get us all killed. I went to grocery shopping at Publix last week. Publix is requiring people to go through aisles in a particular direction. I passed a man who, like me, was not wearing a mask. He had on his confederate flag ball cap and seemed to be defiantly walking the wrong way down the aisle. I say defiantly because he scoffed at the lady in front of me with a mask on, saw me without a mask, and commented about how overblown this whole thing is.

Let me explain just how overblown this whole thing is for everyone.

Last year, roughly 40,000 people died of the flu in the United States. We have passed 60,000 COVID-19 deaths in nine weeks. Those 60,000 deaths are based on confirmed positive tests, not presumed tests. I have subtracted out the presumed cases. If we only considered positive tests for flu, last year less than 10,000 people died in the year. 60,000 in nine weeks versus 10,000 in a year means COVID-19 is not a bad flu, but something worse.

Unfortunately, too many people think there is a binary argument to be had. Either you can accept the virus is as bad as scientists claim and want everyone staying home, or you can find some conspiracy theorist or fringe academic on the internet who claims all the deaths are overstated and we should have never shut down. My favorite are the people who say we should be like Sweden, which has a 12% fatality rate and more deaths than the rest of Scandinavia combined because Sweden did not lock down like its neighbors.

I am no longer surprised so many people only accept the data that comports to their previously held beliefs. But the idiots who have decided this is all overblown, was never a big deal, and the deaths are overstated are going to get us all killed. These future Darwin Award winners will be the super spreaders who ramp back up the viral spread and die still muttering that that doctor on YouTube said it really was no big deal so it cannot be.

Some of us, myself included, accept the virus is worse than the flu, has the potential to overwhelm hospitals, but still think Governor Kemp is right to figure out a way to reopen the state. We cannot stay home forever. The virus is not going away. We need to find a path forward that accommodates the reality of the virus with the need for economic activity.

Governor Kemp is asking people to stay home who do not need to go out. He is allowing businesses to reopen that would otherwise not survive. But he is imposing reasonable rules on how to reopen responsibly with a virus out there. We should wish him well instead of condemning him because we need a path back out of our houses. But I’ll wait for the idiots to get out there first.

Erick Erickson is host of the Erick Erickson Show on News-Talk 940 WMAC.