Categories
coronavirus

“Keep Calm and Carry On” won’t carry us through the coronavirus crisis

By David Futrelle

We like to think we can defeat almost any national trauma by remembering to “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as the popular poster declares.

It’s no accident that the poster, originally produced (if not widely deployed) in pre-war Britain in 1939 had a second and much bigger life in the US in the wake of 9/11, when we were routinely exhorted to keep going to restaurants and bars and theaters lest our social cowardice prove that “the terrorists have won.” (And there was some logic to this argument: the point of terrorism is to terrorize, so by resisting our fears and “carrying on” as normally as we could we lessened the impact of the attacks.)

But we now live in a world where this comforting fantasy no longer applies, where the health of our older and immunocompromised citizens depends on us changing our habitual behavior radically. Social Distancing is hard both practically and psychologically, especially in the US, where it challenges Americans raised on an ideology of rugged individualism to adapt a lifestyle that seems decidedly unheroic – and, for those who are young and healthy, to do it for the sake of others rather than for themselves.

So it’s not surprising that there are still people out there who still think the bravest response to the coronavirus is to refuse to change at all. Think of those who filled the bars and restaurants this past weekend – in Chicago there were long lines of St Patrick’s Day revelers outside the bars in Wrigleyville. Think of Devin Nunes, tut-tutting those too “scared” to go out and suggesting that visiting the local pub was the best thing people could do for our economy.

“I’m not afraid to go out and do what I want,” wrote a Twitterer called Lucky Tony.

In my world, it is … a necessity to go out and have a good time at my local bar and not be stuck at home cause of some ‘virus’ that scares you.

Now that bars and restaurants in many locales have been forced to close their doors to customers by decree – in part because of the terrible decisions people like Tony made over the last weekend – there are some calling for some sort of “resistance” to the closures. “It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM,” tweeted the cowboy-hatted former sherriff and MAGA ideologue David A Clarke Jr.

First sports then schools and finally commercial businesses. Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.

Or stay home and get delivery until the crisis passes. Is that really too much to bear?

Going out won’t help us defeat this enemy; it will enable the virus to do more damage. Hitting the bars isn’t an act of courage; it’s an act of selfishness that puts more vulnerable others at risk. Keeping calm is well and good, but carrying on as normal, well, that’s just what the virus wants us to do.

Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.

We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!

155 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
varalys the dark
4 years ago

UK schools to close from Friday. Other sister is a teacher so she’s one of the lucky ones who can carry on caring for the kids at home. Also her boyf is working from home now. Gonna suck for key workers who don’t or can’t rely on a grandparent to take the kids in. They are making some vague promises they’ll be supported.. somehow. We shall see.

Lainy
Lainy
4 years ago

@Surplus

Please, do not.

Lainy
Lainy
4 years ago

I’ve lived here for almost three years and their kicking me out.

Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
4 years ago

Please do not what?

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Surplus
Talk about silver linings when Lainy is being kicked out of her home.

Lainy
Lainy
4 years ago

@surplus

Because I might already kill myself from the amount of stress and fear, I don’t need even more thrown on me right now! so please do not think of the worse possible things that could happen to me right now! I don’t need the worse case scenario!

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Surplus
Don’t talk about silver linings when Lainy is getting kicked out of her apartment.

Lainy
Lainy
4 years ago

I’m getting laid off, I’m losing my home, my husband is 7,000 miles away from in in a locked down military base because the virus is spreading through out that island so quickly. I have a week to figure out how to get out of my home, and my classes restart up that same next week with very little chance I am going to be able to complete them online. My life is going up in flames, and I know you don’t get that, so please don’t say crap like that! Oh and just another little bullshit thing is that they switched my Adderall for my adhd from generic to the brand name and it’s costing 35 dollars in copays instead of 8, because of the military health insurance I’m with my husband. I’m not doing okay, I need little bit sensitivity. can you please do that! just a smidge.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
4 years ago

@ lainy

I wish I could say some words of comfort that weren’t mere platitudes; or offer some practical advice that didn’t seem condescending.

In lieu, if the thoughts of a random person on the internet mean anything, then know I feel for you.

One thing I would say is, remember, you’ve been through adversity before and you have a 100% success rate on beating it.

Diego Duarte
Diego Duarte
4 years ago

@Lainy

Sorry to hear you’re going through all of this. Does your husband have access to a cellphone? Is there a friend or anybody you can crash with? I’m not going to assume this is your case, but often we are uncomfortable with imposing upon others but situations such as these are precisely the time when you need help.

Try thinking about classmates, friends, family, extended family (including your in-laws) anybody who can lend you a place to stay. Even if it’s temporary, it will help you get your bearings. Then you can sort out one problem at the time. It might seem hopeless and overwhelming, but panic is a temporary feeling. You have been hit with many things at once and so it seems like your life is going up in flames, but it isn’t.

These problems have solutions. Do not hurt yourself. There is always a way out of every hole.

Yutolia the Laissez-Fairy Pronoun Boner
Yutolia the Laissez-Fairy Pronoun Boner
4 years ago

@Lainy: that’s really crappy. I still don’t understand how they can do that legally

varalys the dark
4 years ago

@Lainy. Wot Alan said. You are in my thoughts.

TiredFeet
TiredFeet
4 years ago

Also once they began vaccinating for measles, deaths from *all* viral diseases began to drop. It turns out measles resets your immune system, leaving you vulnerable again to stuff you’d already lived through.

Yeah, I lose it a bit when anti-vaxxers try to claim that experiencing “wild” (as they call it) measles is an amazing benefit that will basically give your immune system superpowers. My little brother had measles as a baby and, until he was well into his teens, every little cold nearly put him in hospital. It was terrifying.

Edit: Sorry, I posted before I saw the most recent comments. I’m sorry, Lainy, that sounds shit. No practical advice but I’m thinking of you.

Lainy
Lainy
4 years ago

@diego

I have to travel back my parents farm because there is no where else that I can go right now or put my furniture and billion different things I have to pack up. It’s a mess and I’m rather upset to have to be moving back in with my parents for the time being but I don’t have any options right now.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
4 years ago

More science.

Discussing the pros and cons of suppression versus mitigation in terms of response.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615377/coronavirus-model-london-vaccine-suppression-imperial-deaths/

varalys the dark
4 years ago

@ Lainy I was evicted from the house I was living in for six years when the landlord sold the property and the new owners wanted to renovate it into expensive flats. And I found I could no longer afford to live in the city of my birth.

I went and lived with my mum and got lucky, via a friend I was offered a new flat to live in when they finished renovating it. I hope similar luck comes your way.

Ucalegont
Ucalegont
4 years ago

@Bigtittydemon:

Thanks. I’m still at it.

@Lainy:

I know nothing and my wits are dim, so forgive me if I’m making it worse.

I get that what you’re facing is very intimidating, almost like something you can’t get through. But to me it looks like in a couple of years you’ll be living away from your parents and finishing your studies, or having finished them. It looks like the end of the world, but it isn’t. I’m aware that your pain is big.

I’m sorry I can’t give you any practical help, but I’m very sure of what I said: you’ll get it behind you.

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
4 years ago

@Alan : it’s interesting, but it also look like they interverted mitigations and suppression. I would have expect mitigation to be “lowering the number of case” and suppression “try to stop transmission completely”, but at the start they say the reverse. And then they say England have moved closer to “suppression”, but with the closing of schools and all I have the feeling they more go toward trying to remove all contamination. Maybe they reversed the words ?

I am personaly of the impression that lockdowns and hard movement control in theory would remove all contamination, but in practice only slow it down. While trying to use softer method to slow down the epidemic would basically do nothing.

opposablethumbs
opposablethumbs
4 years ago

fuck, Lainy, I’m so sorry.
it’s utterly shitty that they can do that, especially when people have got so much to cope with.
I hope you will be OK.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

No contact social distancing hugs to anyone who needs them.

So, I have a cough today. It’s fairly mild, but it is of the dry and hacking variety. Plus my head is staring to hurt. My dad, who I live with, was sent home from work early today because one of his coworkers may have been exposed to Coronavirus. So, that’s not comforting.

It’s probably a cold that I have, but I’m less optimistic than I was yesterday.

Diego Duarte
Diego Duarte
4 years ago

@WWTH

Some tips: I took flu medicine and my symptoms abated. From what I gather, flu medicine isn’t supposed to do shit to Covid 19, so if you do get some relief at least you can rest assured. Also, apparently the virus comes with other complications.

Hippodameia
Hippodameia
4 years ago

Lainy and wwth – that sucks. I’m so sorry.

I live in Puget Sound and was at my dentist’s office today. They’re closing down normal operations for at least three weeks, starting tomorrow. Part of the reason is they’re almost out of surgical masks and can’t get more.

Talking Points Memo has been following Washington’s efforts to get a medicare waiver, which has yet to be granted:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/read-what-washington-told-the-trump-admin-about-how-bad-its-covid19-crisis-is

Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meanie
Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meanie
4 years ago

The only coronavirus I’m interested in catching is the one that will inevitably show up on this site. At the very least, they’ll be cuter than the real thing, and more likely to cause smiles instead of coughing.

@Lainy: ugh, that blows big time. You’d think a university would let registered students living outside the dorms to stay in them for the next semester or something. Hopefully the stay with the parents will be a shortish one, and you’ll find a new place soon. (Presumably you’re on decent terms with the parentals.)

As for the Internet things, do a survey of the areas that have free WiFi, and see if they have outdoor areas to use as a temporary computer station. Or a business like Wal-Mart or Lowe’s, that have signals strong enough to go out into their parking lots where you can do your classes in your car. There should be something or someplace in your area that will let you get good reception without inconveniencing others.

Good luck.

Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
4 years ago

The Ontario government is all over the map with this.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/2019-novel-coronavirus

There’s a decent amount of lockdown and distancing, but several things are “laugh-or-cry”, notably including:

* make sure that shared rooms have good airflow (e.g. open windows)

I think that advice is targeted only to households with cases, or suspected cases, but really? Open windows? In Ontario in March? I suppose that’s one way to limit spread: convince everyone who gets it to freeze themselves to death. Well, I suppose there’s an alternative, which is jack up the heat and be willing to swallow a two or three thousand dollar hydro bill on April 1. Which of course won’t be much of an alternative to anyone not in a white-collar work-from-home-compatible job that survives the economic crash that’s now in progress, and would be painful even for them.

Also semi-not-really-all-that-amusing is that not only does the page require Javashit, despite being mainly a bunch of ordinary formatted text that ordinary HTML can handle just fine, but it won’t display anything without enabling a third-party script as well as its own scripts. (To wit, the “cloudflare.com” one.) There don’t even seem to be any interactive widgets (like fiddlable graphs and charts) on it that might justify needing JS, not that their presence would justify blanking the static-text bulk of the page if JS isn’t enabled. The obvious ulterior motive for requiring JS, to defeat some methods of blocking advertising, doesn’t even apply to this non-commercial ad-free site. So either the ulterior motive is some sinister state tracking one (supervised by Doug Ford <shudder>) or there is none and it’s just plain laziness combined with ignorance (i.e., some contractor slapped the site together in some cheap glitzy page design app that is itself badly designed enough that even basic bulleted lists come out requiring JS, rather than anyone who actually knew HTML actually coding the page in actual HTML like one would hope).

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
4 years ago

@ surplus

semi-not-really-all-that-amusing is that not only does the page require Javashit…

The UK Government’s official advice was only available to subscribers to the Daily Telegraph; which has to be the Toriest thing ever!

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/matt-hancock-telegraph-column-1-6562016