Plural anecdotes, but: most folks I’ve seen on social media, Reddit, friends very much have interpreted “social distancing” as withdrawing from society. On the NYC and coronavirus subreddits the consensus seems to be that you’re a selfish piece of garbage if you leave the house for any non-essential reason.
The bully pulpit is supremely important in these situations, and no government so far seems to have used it responsibly to disseminate a consistent message early enough to citizenry. Worse yet, in the US ones politics seems to be particularly predictive of opinion on coronavirus.
My current feeling is that the virus was not taken seriously when action could have mattered, and now the goal of government and citizenry is to reduce the carnage to both medically vulnerable folks (old people) and to economically vulnerable people. The latter risk in particular scares me, as there are many folks in the US who are going to be severely impacted by politicians reacting severely way too late who are too cowardly to protect those vulnerable people adequately.
The bully pulpit is supremely important in these situations, and no government so far seems to have used it responsibly to disseminate a consistent message early enough to citizenry. Worse yet, in the US ones politics seems to be particularly predictive of opinion on coronavirus.
My current feeling is that the virus was not taken seriously when action could have mattered, and now the goal of government and citizenry is to reduce the carnage to both medically vulnerable folks (old people) and to economically vulnerable people. The latter risk in particular scares me, as there are many folks in the US who are going to be severely impacted by politicians reacting severely way too late who are too cowardly to protect those vulnerable people adequately.