Why this is "really" going to be a red vs blue issue...

We’re Now Living the American Carnage Trump Promised Would End at His Inauguration Trump is not responsible for the virus itself, but he must be held accountable for his horrifying response to it.

Blah, blah, blah, bad orange man, blah, blah, blah... it's all Trumps fault. Blah, blah blah, this is the worst thing ever, blah blah blah... and it's all the bad orange man's fault. Blah, blah, blah!

So how bad is it "really" and who ultimately gets to judge? The reality is that the answer to that question is a matter of perspective and ultimately we all get to judge. The media might be able to shove a talking points memo down the willing throats of the liberal sheep out there, but most people (at least those who don't spend their time spamming message boards and comment threads with media opinions) will make up their own minds.

The truth of the matter is there is really going to be many different opinions based on little more than your reality. What do I mean? Well let's look at Minnesota for example. We have 87 counties. Half our deaths are from one county (Hennepin),  six other counties (besides Hennepin) have had more than one death, four counties have had one death, and there are no Covid-19 casualties in the remaining 76 counties. Nearly half of our counties have either no reported cases or one reported case.

Let me repeat that. We have no casualties in 76 of 87 counties and close to half of our 87 counties have either zero or one reported case.

So while those who live in New York city might be experiencing some sort of "carnage", the bulk of the country is basically playing along and watching it from afar. Given our limited human capacity for empathy of things we have no real understanding for, the best we can offer is sympathy, and how many know (or really care) exactly how real it feels for those who live in areas of the country who have seen basically no effect. It may be little more than reality television for some.

The truth is that our big city coasters have forever discounted and demeaned the people who live in "flyover country". Calls for a national shut down come almost entirely from liberals from big coastal areas most closely affected by the virus. The attacks on red state Governors who have either been slower to close down or have resisted calls all together must be based on the concept of shared suffering more than any real idea that not shutting down Wyoming is somehow dangerous to the rest of the country. Nobody from New York goes to Wyoming, and nobody from Wyoming goes to New York. More to the point, if you are worried about a traveler coming to New York  who might be bringing a disease I doubt it's the person from Wyoming that you will want to avoid.

I would also offer that these calls for a national shut down may be induced by little more than the fact that Trump has resisted them. What the bad orange man supports or does simply must be wrong. Or probably more realistically, liberals are literally looking for things that Trump "hasn't done" so they can find something to criticize him for.

So ultimately if you live in a small rural community that ends up with marginal medical issues from Covid-19, (but very real economic issues) are you going to be upset that some places were slow to shut down? Are you going to wonder out loud how necessary it actually was for remote places with no impact to shut down because large metropolitan areas were being hit?

Fear carries the day. If we make people afraid enough of something, they will react. But fear only lasts so long and then logic will take over. It's like the Geico commercial where the people in the bad slasher horror film decide that getting in the running truck and leaving is a horrible idea, and instead decide to go hide in the shed with all of the chain saws. We do not behave rationally under fear and pressure. But when we look back, hindsight being 20-20, we will see things more rationally than we did.

I suspect that is where we will see a big red vs blue divide. Not only because of the inherent differences of opinions and partisan reactions to the Covid-19 crisis, but also because of what will likely be very distinct differences in how it affected you in real life.