UNI88 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 1:36 pm
GannonFan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 12:38 pm
As we've known since April - wear masks whenever you're around others, when you can't (say when eating or drinking) stay 6ft apart, wash your hands, and clean surfaces regularly. None of this is difficult and a consistent message from April would've been very useful. Confusing messaging, or even no messaging, and inconsistent messaging over 50+ entities (federal and state as well as local), coupled with people's general distrust in many elected officials, has made this a cluster. But that's why were America.
Ganny nails it.
We shouldn't have unnecessary social gatherings now but the officials that allowed the protests lost credibility and now look like hypocrites when attempting to restrict gatherings or require masks (see DeBlasio, Bill). Their actions encouraged the naysayers who are blaming the current spike on the protests & riots. Leaders also blew it when they started reopening without emphasizing
strongly enough that we weren't through this and that while restaurants and stores would be reopening people still need to wear masks and physical distance or things would shut down again. Trump hasn't been the only buffoon to display poor leadership during this pandemic.
Heck, in PA alone, Wolf stong-armed things for too long and lost a good segment of the population who thought he was just exerting power to show that he could. People complained about Walmarts and Home Depots being considered "essential" and open all during the pandemic, but similar stores, but locally owned, weren't allowed to be open. And then he took a long time to open other things up. Heck (this is a double heck post, a rarity), keeping hair salons and barbers closed until the end of June didn't make any sense. When I got my hair cut two weeks ago, the person cutting my hair was wearing a smock, a face mask, and a shield, I was wearing a mask, and they limited the number of people in the business to two people at a time (customers). Why did that need to wait until the end of June when we knew (and we talked about it here in this thread) in April that that's what would be required to operate?
When you don't make good decisions, or when you don't make any decisions at all, people rightfully see it as poor leadership, and it weakens that authority going forward. Wolf went too far in one direction and has seen the push back, other governors or the President went too far in another direction and have seen the impacts to the health of too many people. Not many American politicians got it all right, or even mostly right, in this pandemic and we're suffering as a result. But then again, we're the ones who voted in those folks, on both sides of the aisle.