Week fuck it doesn't even matter

Thank you everyone who wished me a happy birthday, I was going to reply individually but I didn't, then kept putting it off until it was awkward, I do actually appreciate the wishes.

I turned 37 as the pandemic strengthened to an unprecedented level... in the USA. Here in Oregon we have had record numbers of new cases and we are certainly not the only state that is happening in. Our governor has been posting increasingly desperate requests and demands for people to wear masks and properly distance, culminating in a statement saying that this 4th of July weekend and week will pretty much decide if the schools open this year.

Of course, during all this no mention was made of any help for people to distance, the restaurants and bars are still open, as are the beaches and virtually every business. Rent is still piling up, the bills still have to be paid, folks still have to eat, and the unemployment benefit extension will expire in 3 weeks.

Nearly every death and illness from Covid-19 was avoidable and it required failures at every level for it to get like this, first and foremost of course was the White House seemingly intentionally sabotaging any hope of a coordinated federal response in the months leading up to the pandemic, but state and local authorities all bear some measure of responsibility too. No governor and precious few mayors have had the guts to properly lock down their area's for the amount of time and to the extent that it was needed. Even the "good" ones, maybe even especially them. Governors Cuomo, Newsom, and yes, even Kate Brown, have blood on their hands that they knowingly accepted as the price of doing business. They are Democrats, they are theoretically moral and kind individuals, and yet they knew, they knew, that what they were doing was a half measure at best, perhaps they hoped that their citizens would have stepped up and done the right thing, maintained their distancing and adopted safe practices without the force of law behind it. But that was a foolish hope and they should have known better. Even if the spirit was willing, the flesh still has to pay the rent. We point to the failures of Congress and the Senate and watch as they ignore or vote against measures that can directly help save thousands. But we ignore the local governments when they do nothing themselves.

This country is in many ways not a unified entity, every state has many elements of an independent nation of it's own and has certain rights and freedoms because of that. Many of the states have a GDP higher than a lot of countries, but with all that money and power there seems no will to use it. We could, as a state, decide to implement Universal Basic Income and hazard pay provisions until the crisis is past. It would surely cost a lot and be difficult to pass in our own legislatures, but it likely can be done. Yet I have heard nothing, not even a whisper, of those ideas being implemented, instead it is pleas to stay home without the force of law, and railing against the federal government for not doing anything. They aren't and likely won't do anything, our governors have to know this and yet they continue to follow reopening plans in defiance of all logic or rationality.

To be a leader is to make hard choices, I don't believe anyone can run a country, even one as small as Oregon, and not have blood on their hands based on their decisions. But right now they are making the wrong choices, they should be buying time with money, instead they are buying money with lives.

And no one seems to care.