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This looks like a fun day at the water park, right? It’s a picture from this year’s Memorial Day celebration at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. People are celebrating the holiday weekend without a care in the world. There are plenty of photos like this circulating online, but the “PLEASE PRACTICE SOCIAL DISTANCING” banner proudly displayed over a tightly-packed crowd makes this one my favorite. That’s one for the history books, folks.
The pandemic isn’t over. Not even close. The spike of people gathering in crowds like this over the holiday weekend will inevitably trigger a second wave of infections and deaths.
Why is this happening? Why are people gathering in large crowds when the virus may still be spreading at epidemic rates in 24 states, and a second wave was starting in the Midwest and South even before people started abandoning distancing over the holiday weekend?
It’s not because “people are dumb and selfish.” That misanthropic argument has been circulating widely on social media, but it’s simply not true. Most Americans want to maintain stay-at-home orders until the evidence indicates that it’s safe to lift them. Memorial Day in particular is an apt time to remind our fellow Americans that we can unite across partisan lines against a common threat when we put our minds to it. So why are a small but significant…
