How the government wasted our pandemic sacrifices

This sleight of hand is part of a pattern. Our leaders love to valorize individual effort, especially when it suggests policy reform is unnecessary. When a child saves up his allowance to pay back his classmates’ lunch debt, it’s not a feel good story, much less a universal way to ensure every student has enough to eat. After graduating into a recession, millennials can’t catch up by avoiding avocado toast and lattes. The environment won’t be saved by banning plastic straws, rather than seriously considering nuclear power.

In each case, these stories shift the blame to individuals — if they really cared about getting out of debt or cleaning up the environment, shouldn’t they be visibly suffering in pursuit of the goal? If not, what right do they have to demand that anyone else take action?

During the summer, beachgoers were shamed for going swimming, with some news organizations using misleading photos to imply they weren’t social distancing. But being outdoors in the open air was one of the safest ways to socialize. The virus isn’t a horror movie villain, stalking victims to punish them for having fun. And yet, the more people went outside during the summer, the more they were treated like the problem. Meanwhile, the government wasted the summer failing to ramp up testing capacity and underfunding ventilation upgrades for schools.