Darwinism in real time: The virus succeeds, humans fail

Photo: Tracy Barbutes

From The Pandemic From the Virus’s Point of View: (The career of the coronavirus in Darwinian terms is a great success story)

By David Quammen

No sensible person can dispute that Covid-19 is a great tragedy for humanity — a tragedy even in the ancient Greek sense, as defined by Aristotle, with the disastrous ending contingent on some prideful flaw in the protagonist. 

This time it’s not Oedipus or Agamemnon. This time it’s we who are that cocky protagonist, having brought disaster on ourselves. The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership...

Rob's comment:

It's becoming both a failure of leadership---particularly Republican leadership, starting at the top with President Trump---and a failure of "communal will" by many in the Republican Party's political base.

In this morning's SF Chronicle:

The small restaurant in mountainous Mariposa County, with its game mounts and American flags, continued to serve up chicken-fried steak and braised beef ribs. 

Owner Steve Knauf, 60, said he’s just not interested in taking cues from Sacramento anymore. “I think they’re trying to instill fear for something that’s not there,” Knauf said.

Knauf’s sentiment has been a common one, particularly in the rural reaches that make up much of the 12-county San Joaquin Valley region that the state told Monday to halt all but essential services because of the pandemic. 

The order, following months of shifting and often unpopular restrictions, appears to be only fanning frustration, if not outright defiance...

Why would "they" in Sacramento want to scare people like Steve Knauf? Well, that's apparently just what those smarty-pants elected officials, liberals, and scientists do to regular guys like Knauf.

What Knauf and the like-minded folks in Mariposa County are really doing is collaborating with the enemy---which is the virus---making it easier for it to spread to Knauf's friends and his relations at home, maybe a father or uncle, maybe a young person with a pre-existing condition.

Trump easily beat Biden in Mariposa County.