Americans Are Hard to Quarantine; The same spirit that helped us to establish liberty here also makes us uncooperative

National Review ^ | 03/05/2020 | Kevin Williamson

[SeekAndFind]

One of my regular themes is that Americans are disorderly and disobedient people — gloriously so and dangerously so. People who understand that roll their eyes when, e.g., one of our progressive friends points out how much more frequently Americans kill each other with firearms than do most Europeans or Japanese. Democrats think that means we need more gun control. (And they generally press for the dumbest possible model of gun control: new restrictions on licensed firearms dealers and the people who do business with them, the most law-abiding demographic in the country.) People who have a better handle on the facts of American life know that, yes, we shoot each other a lot more often than the Swiss, but we also stab each other a lot more often, beat each other to death with our bare hands or blunt objects more often, etc.

We also have more automobile accidents and dangerous and deadly accidents of other kinds — our traffic-fatality rate is 50 percent higher than that of Western Europe or Canada. The same disobedient spirit that helped us to establish liberty here also makes us uncooperative, obstreperous, and, sometimes, dangerous. It’s a package deal.

And this, reported by NBC Boston, is part of the package:

"New Hampshire’s first coronavirus patient, a hospital employee, went to an event tied to Dartmouth business school on Friday despite being told to stay isolated, officials say."

That story has everything: Of course that plague carrier was a hospital worker, and of course the event was for the Dartmouth business school. Of course, of course, of course!

Americans are bananas, and American public policy has to take the whole banana bunch into account.

[RummyChick]

He has a point. We will be hard to quarantine. Rebellious by nature

And we don’t have Commies pointing guns to our head or welding our doors.

[Red Badger]

Easy to lead, impossible to drive..........................

[MNJohnnie]

Maybe we we had sober serious leader and a real “News” Media who had a serious sober discussion instead of a screaming hysteric hype fest, Americans might take the Political/Media class more seriously.

REAL data here. When the clown class plays Chicken Little every day, people stop listening. This is why they should STOP being utter morons and start having even the slightest hint of journalistic ethics and intellectual honesty.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[zerosix]

Americans aren’t “hard to quarantine,” they’re impossible!

What’s more, they won’t be quarantined, no matter who gets infected, it’s all about the individual, “me, I, me!”

“Who cares about you, it’s all about me, now get, outta my way, I’m late for my double machiatto latte!”

[RedStateRocker]

Damned right.

Just *try* and keep me on a cruise ship, or in my house against my will; better to die than to live one second as a slave or a prisoner.

[RedStateRocker]

Quite frankly, yes.

My right to go where I shall and do what I shall is more important than the population of any continent you care to name.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: And we don’t have Commies pointing guns to our head or welding our doors.

We have people from all races and ethnicities who are Americans. Some come from disciplined cultures, others not.

Heck, we don’t even have a government that agrees to protect our borders. As the author said:

The difference is that Denmark is full of Danes, Switzerland is full of Swiss, and America is full of maniacs.

Try passing a law REQUIRING quarantines from people coming from China, Korea, Italy and Japan.

Do you think it will even pass the courts when challenged?

[Jim Robinson]

Praying the warmer weather will slow down the spread of this virus and that they can develop a vaccine to head if off before it starts up again.

[BlackAdderess]

Don’t flunk/fire us and let us work from home.

[Widget Jr]

How Corvid-19 spreads is a bigger problem than resisting quarantine - which has not happened anywhere in the U.S. It can take up to two weeks for symptoms to appear, and some people who have it are “Typhoid Mary’s” and don’t get sick while spreading it.

[Retrofitted]

THIS! Want me to quarantine myself? Not a problem! Be glad to! You gonna pay my bills? Support my addiction to food, clothing, and shelter? Yeah, thought that would be off the table.

[dljordan]

“Rebellious by nature”

Why do you think they’re importing new Americans by the millions?

[21twelve]

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams

I think that this applies to how we behave with regard to this virus. Such as taking precautions to avoid the possibility of infecting others, regardless of how it might inconvenience us.

[ConservativeMind]

It’s like herding cats, unless we are under group attack.

Don’t herd me. I am won over by godly arguments and rational thought.

I will fight the rest.

[livius]

This “exec” shouldn’t have gone to this event. Respect your fellow citizens and don’t go to the event, consider your quarantine a brief holiday, and then go back after you’re not contagious. I always remember people in the office who would show up hacking and coughing, do nothing all day because they felt so bad...but infect all the rest of us with whatever they had.

Sorry, this guy was not an American being independent, he was just an arrogant, minor-level guy who thought his attendance at this meeting was more important than anything.

That said, what Americans have got to do is stop panicking. I was at a grocery store in Florida the other day and saw people wearing those ineffective masks...not even over their faces but draped around their necks!

Wash your hands, pressure your city to deal with the “homeless” and public sanitation (especially if you live in SF or LA or NYC) and then just do your thing.

Statistics are very distorted because of course China won’t release them and China lies all the time anyway, but don’t worry. Hang in there, if you invest look for good buying opportunities, and just keep calm.

I’ve been very upset by seeing the hysteria on FR because I thought most of us were believing Christians or Jews and would not be stampeded, but now it appears that most of us are actually media sock-puppets.

[mewzilla]

There’s a difference between bring rebellious and being an a**hole.

If you’re quarantined, abide by the quarantine. Don’t be an a**hole.

[oldasrocks]

My wife is in Taiwan. The government there puts ankle monitor bracelets on people who are in quarantine. Fine is 1 million NT if they break quarantine. ( about $30,000 US)

They have stopped the spread of the virus in Taiwan,

[null and void]

Yup.

[null and void]

Easy to lead, impossible to drive..........................

I don't think it can be better described.

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.