The Narcissism of the COVID troofer
By 
It’s another day for everyone to dunk on Naomi “death recorded” Wolf, and does she ever deserve it:
The stupidity of this reasoning lies in its selfishness. I refrain from many activities that are probably minimum risk to me because I worry about the restaurant workers who have to stew in a sea of aggregated risks incurred by others. https://t.co/Ippa5v0kDZ— Michelle Dean (@michelledean) February 7, 2021
I hate to amplify this person but this view seems to be the prevailing one at universities that have chosen to hold in person classes and it feels pretty personal to me as my colleagues and students are getting sick https://t.co/5Qx3nLT42V— Julia Azari (@julia_azari) February 7, 2021
It’s got it all: pretending that arbitrary distancing guidelines can protect people from maskless indoor interactions when they don’t, dressing up obscene self-centeredness as altruism, “forgetting” that people at relatively low morbidity risk from COVID interact with others who are not, etc. etc.
When I’ve criticized state and local policymakers from opening indoor dining in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was unsafe, a lot of people made excuses for the failures of blue-state public officials they like more than Trump or Rick DeSantis by pointing to a lack of federal aid. Well, both state and local aid and aid for restaurants are coming thanks to the fine people of Georgia are coming and we’re doing it again, which should make pretty clear that these bad policy choices were much less about tax revenues and much more about elites who think the way Wolf does or are unwilling to stand up to them. There is going to be a lot of unnecessary death and suffering because people are unwilling to delay gratification and are happy to put other people at risk to do so.