A Divided World: A Political Stance
As everyone seems to know, there is a pandemic happening called the Corona Virus and Max Johnson, an eighteen year old from Utah is just one of the millions of people that know about it and along with all of those people he, of course, has his opinion on the pandemic. Now Utah is a very republican leaning state meaning Max and his family are republicans and have voted that way for years. With that being said, Max does not understand all the hype of the Corona Virus because his family is all healthy and he lives in a very rural town, so he does not think that he will be affected by the virus. Also, most republican leaning states display less urgency than the democratic leaning states. Utah’s government has shown less urgency about the situation.
So that night, Max and his family sat down for dinner and he noticed that there seemed to be some tension between his parents. So very calmly he asked, “how was everyone’s day?” His mom looked at him with a very unhappy look on her face and said, “I am going to be working from home for a while.” That took Max by surprise and he did not understand what was going on. Being a teacher, his mother had never worked from home before. So he asked why she would be working from home and his father replied, “the virus has now spread into the state and it was in the best interest of the students and staff to close the school for a bit.” Immediately after saying that the phone rang and his father got up to answer it. After a few minutes, the look on Max’s father’s face turned grim and he turned to Max and said “that was your school, they too have closed down due the virus.” Now that made Max very angry, he did not understand what the being deal was about the virus, like it did not seem anymore different than the flu. So he stormed up to his room and turned on his tv. But as soon as he turned it on the news channel came on talking about more schools and businesses being closed and he quickly turned off the tv. Laying in his bed, Max thought about what the president originally said about the whole situation about it going just as quickly as it came, which clearly was not the truth. But Max still did not believe that the virus was such a big deal. Even without school he would carry on life as normal, even though there were news and health officials saying that everyone should practice social distancing to slow the spread of the virus.
The next morning, Max got a text from his friend Lydia, who was checking in to see how he was doing after hearing that his school was closed. He said to her that he thought it was stupid and that this whole thing was not a big deal and that people were freaking out over nothing. Now Lydia, being a democrat who lived in Illinois, disagreed with what he said. She texted him back and replied, “I do not see the need to fully panic but I do think you should take the situation a lot more seriously.” Max replied to her with, “it is no different than the flu and besides I am healthy and so is my family. I also live in a rural town so it probably will not affect my family and besides the president could just build his wall and keep the sick people out of our country." Hearing that made Lydia angry because she did not feel that Max was understanding the severity of what was going on and the building a wall was wrong and was not going to do much of anything at this point because the virus was already in every state. But she calmly told him that just because he lives in a rural town does not mean that the virus is not going to come there. But Max being stuck in his republican ways refused to take the situation seriously.
That afternoon, Max told his dad what Lydia had said and his dad laughed at it because he also did not understand what the fuss about the virus was. He told Max not to worry about what she said and that she was just worrying about nothing. His dad also thought that she may have been watching too much tv or on social media too much and that that was making her worry. Later on the day, Max texted Lydia again and told her what his dad had said and needless to say she was not happy hearing about it. She still did not understand why they were so nonchalant about the whole thing and when Max said that he was going to hang out with his friends she told him that it was not a smart idea. To which he asked why and she said that, “you should practice social distancing to limit the spread of the virus.” When Max read that message he laughed and said “Lydia you are crazy. I think this virus thing has gone to your head.” Hearing that again did not make her happy and all she replied with was, “have a good time with your friends then.” He still was not understanding what the fuss about because Utah only has 4,981 coronavirus cases and 49 while Lydia's state of Illinois is in the top 10 states with the most cases because Illinois has 58,505 cases and 2,576 deaths.
While out with his friends, he asked them what they thought of the Coronavirus and they all agreed that it was not a big deal. Since they all were Trump supporters, they also thought that he did the right thing by covering up the severity of everything going on because now everyone is panicking about it. While they were hanging out, Max remembered a conversation he had with Lydia earlier that morning about how stores in her state of Illinois were completely out of toilet paper, so Max and his friends decided to see if stores where they lived in Utah had the same issue. So they went into the store and went to the toilet paper aisle and saw that the shelves were fully stocked. He also remembered her mentioning that soap and hand sanitizer were completely sold out too and sure enough the store Max was hanging out in had plenty of soap and hand sanitizer. So he texted her again and told her about it and she did not answer right away but when she did she said, “that’s great but you need to take this more seriously because the faster you do the quicker our lives can go back to normal.”
After hanging out with his friends for a while, Max came home and found his mom stressed out on the computer and he asked her what was wrong. His mom said, “I wish people would calm down and realize this is not a big deal so I could go back into work.” After hearing that, Max decided to tell her what Lydia had said about social distancing and that the more people that do it the quicker we can stop the spread of the virus and the quicker life can get back to normal. His mom replied with, “well that may be true but you have to keep in mind that she is a democrat and they are much more concerned with this virus than us republicans.” Max thought about what his mom said for a while and decided to do some research on the and learned that just 35 percent of Republicans are concerned with the virus, compared to 68 percent of Democrats based on a poll done by Quinnipiac University. Max quickly realized that he, his friends and family made up that 35 percent while Lydia and her family made up that 68 percent. That kind of information really surprised Max.
Reflective Note
As a Democrat writing from the point of view as a Republican was kind of difficult. I do believe that the corona virus is more serious than some people think and seeing how the president is handling the situation makes me mad because he could be doing so much more than he is, but also how people across the state are taking the situation. I understand these situations are not ideal and not what anyone wanted but this what is going on and we can only control our actions.
Works Cited
Coppins, McKay. “Trump’s Dangerously Effective Coronavirus Propaganda” The Atlantic, 11 March 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-threat/607825/
Brownstein, Roland. “Red and Blue America Aren’t Experiencing the Same Pandemic” The Atlantic, 20 March 2020 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/how-republicans-and-democrats-think-about-coronavirus/608395/
"Illinois Coronavirus Map And Case Count" The New York Times, 3 May 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/illinois-coronavirus-cases.html
"Utah Coronavirus Map And Case Count" The New York Times, 3 May 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/utah-coronavirus-cases.html