Painful social and economic restrictions barely averted a catastrophic collapse of the entire healthcare system in April. In November, far too many Americans have decided they just don’t care about that collapse anymore. No one is talking about what this means.

Every rural county in America right now is simultaneously anti-mask and anti-quarantine, even as there are 0 beds and people are unable to access basic care for hundreds of miles. Why isn’t there more urgency about this?

This isn’t as simple as looking at elite messaging. It doesn’t take much to hear Trump lackeys dismiss the pandemic but still notice that you have no primary care anywhere you can drive to. It’s something else, a nihilism that has infected vast swaths of the population.

I don’t have an answer to this! Public officials have lost their appetite for future lockdowns. Even a mask mandate remains inexplicably controversial, as if people would rather die than sit at home with their family and thoughts for a few weeks. What’s the way out?

It’s easy to joke about “the Party of Death” or whatever, but how do you change that? If this would only affect people who refused personal responsibility I’d be sad but not frightened. But that refusal affects me too. I can’t opt-out of the social irresponsibility.

At this point we aren’t even talking about the old shibboleth of getting someone to have empathy for others. We are talking about having empathy for themselves. It isn’t happening. People have decided preserving their own lives is too hard so they choose not to do it.

I’m upset. Everything is worse than it was in March but the numbness to mass death is shocking to me. I can’t comprehend it. What do we do?