That we will get through this together is true up to a point.
That point, I guess, is when the opposing political party decides it just can’t take any more laudatory national stories about Kentucky’s Mr. Rogers and how well he’s handling the pandemic. So they start hitting him with spurious accusations of this and that, a painfully obvious attempt to win back the news cycle. …
Written by Linda Blackford of the Herald-Leader
Then there was the goon squad that showed up at the Capitol Wednesday, squawking about liberty and abortion and business as Beshear announced how many Kentuckians had died the day before. They crowded each other without face masks, while yelling nonsense, which might be some kind of Darwinian exercise. We’ll find out in about two weeks.
Here is the thing. It’s lovely to talk about reopening the economy, but it can’t happen until there is much more personal protective equipment for everyone and much more testing to see who has the virus and who doesn’t. …
In other words, we need widespread testing to gauge how many people have already had the virus or how many people are sick, and we need more PPE so there’s enough for both frontline hospital workers and your family dentist. As many people predicted, when social distancing works and death rates are low, people say it was an overreaction. That may be what’s happening now, but ease up too soon, and you’ll get another curve. I’m going to trust the public health officials on this. …
I’m sure it must be very very difficult for the GOP to watch Beshear, who squeaked into office with 5,000 votes just because the other guy was such a jerk, now commanding laudatory state and national headlines for his virus wrangling. That must be galling. But please do better than this empty grandstanding. What most people would like to see is that we really are in this together.
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