That breakdown of urban blue states vs. rural red states sounds more or less correct, but I wouldn’t call Vermont very red unless you mean commie red…

I’m seeing some irritation from left-leaning friends worried about the small businesses they work for. I have a friend who stands out on main street in Waterbury, VT almost every day for a half hour holding up an anti-Trump protest sign. He’s also an HR manager at a small company that manufactures stoves. He had to let go of 70% of his staff almost immediately. That was over a month ago. I haven’t talked to him about it recently, but I’m certain that number has gone up. I don’t know how many of those jobs are coming back.

I also don’t know how our governor will square that kind of job loss multiplied by a thousand-fold across the state with COVID cases so low and deaths so low they’re not even a top 5 cause of death.

But I’d ask you not to blame the pro-lockdown camp, either, if we still get a prolonged recession out of this — demand isn’t going to come back to normal if we have a year long epidemic where many people don’t feel safe to consume. Some industries will get wiped out.

I’m in a different situation because I work remotely for a publisher that’s actually doing great right now. I guess people being stuck at home is good for readership. Regardless of who I blame, there’s going to be some blame. The most rabid pro-shutdown folks seem positively gleeful that small businesses are taking it up the ass. There’s this guy on medium named Umair Haque who is doing victory laps around the corpse of blue collar jobs. We still have governors who clearly love the power they have now. The political class is slurping up this authority they didn’t know they had or didn’t think they could get away with, and the media loves the attention too. So these types of people are more than willing to engender as much fear as possible. I don’t know who else to blame but them for a fearful population that won’t go shopping when the shut down is over.
Have you seen Katie Couric’s daily covid death porn stories? The fear narrative has taken over.