Melissa Shapiro, 26, sat in the sun under a sign suggesting social distancing at the Redhead Lakeside Grill on Saturday, as dozens stood shoulder-to-shoulder in waist-deep water before her. “We’re not in L.A. or New York,” she observed. “We’re at Lake of the Ozarks, and if there were as many people here as there was last weekend, we’d leave.”
Besides, Shapiro said, “we’re millennials, we’re healthy,” and she and her friends planned to isolate themselves for 14 days after returning home to St. Louis.
Proprietors at a number of the bars and eateries that line the Missouri vacation spot said the crowds were about normal for an early summer weekend — albeit smaller than the hordes that packed into the area on Memorial Day. Images of the holiday revelry went viral online.
Local health officials reported that at least one person tested positive for the coronavirus after being in the lake area last weekend. The Camden County Health Department posted a timeline of the multiple bars the unnamed resident of a nearby county had visited in succession over a number of hours.
But on Saturday, face masks and social distancing were scarce to nonexistent in the many marinas and boat docks, and restaurants along the lakefront appeared to be open for business.
Similar scenes played out around the country as many Americans, eager to recapture a sense of normalcy and seemingly confident that the risk was low, enjoyed public recreation and seemed unbothered by the crowds. Read More
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Unless people are being hospitalized and dying in large numbers in their community, Americans are inclined to dismiss the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. From what we know about the COVID-19 virus, a community that was experiencing few or no confirmed cases may become a "hot spot" in a short period of time. Those who believe that the virus has gone away because the number of cases in their community has subsided or their community has not been as hard hit as other communities are fooling themselves. In the meantime flouting recommended precautionary measures and crowding into bars and restaurants, onto beaches, and into the stadiums of race car tracks or hitting the streets to protest and in some cases to loot, they are spreading COVID-19 in their communities and elsewhere. We are experiencing what may some day be remembered as the "COVID-19 spring," a time which led to further outbreaks of the virus in the United States and more virus-related deaths.
A great deal of disinformation regarding the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of recommended precautionary measures in suppressing or mitigating the virus' spread is being disseminated on social media. Indeed we may be described as being in the midst of a pandemic of disinformation. One NPR article draws attention to how Facebook's algorithms "exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness." The same article goes on to observe:
Much of Russia's influence operation on social media in 2016 wasn't about introducing new ideas or controversy but instead was about furthering racial and political divides already present in American culture.A divide that was not present in 2016 is the current divide over the seriousness of the pandemic and the effectiveness of recommended precautionary measures. The likelihood that the Russian intelligence services are exploiting this divide is high. The kind of chaos an America divided over how it should respond to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to experience is the kind of chaos that they wish to foster. It will greatly weaken the United States as a nation.
"To put it simply, in this space Russia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart," said David Porter, an assistant section chief with the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, earlier this year.
More people spending more time on the platforms where this takes place likely will mean even more attempts at amplifying divisions and stoking discord.
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