I agree with Chris Hayes here. Cold weather + holiday parties + travel + Thanksgiving feasts + Christmas gathering would seem to be a perfect storm for COVID, especially with numbers already spiking. We were concerned about the pandemic back in March, when the rate of infections was a tiny fraction of what it is now. This is insanity.
BTW, my elderly mother and her adult children WILL have an hour-long in-person Thanksgiving celebration this year. We will meet outside at my mom’s house during the “heat” of the day, spread far apart from each other on lawn chairs, eating our BYO snack and drink for about an hour. Unless it’s surprisingly warm, in which case we might linger longer.
It’s ridiculous!
This is what astounds me, that people don’t get that people have different values that drive their actions. Have none of you read Haidt’s , The Righteous Mind? “It is very hard to empathize across a moral divide” I could handle these SMH type comments if there was at least an acknowledgment how family gatherings rate very high on conservatives values. You have the freedom to decline to go, they exercise their freedom to take the risk.
I agree that family gatherings are important–no one contests that. That said, which of Haidt’s moral foundations dictate the proper course? I don’t know that there is an answer, because Haidt’s foundations are descriptive, not proscriptive. Further, we are all tuned differently – – we all have different constellations of moral “taste.”
I could make an argument that 1, 3 and 5 would work in favor of getting together for the holidays. On the other hand, 1, 3 and 5 (especially 1) could also cause one to avoid potentially super spreading holiday gatherings. I don’t have any idea how any individual would quantify these factors to decide whether to physically gather with the family for the holiday.
What if I had a poisonous snake and I wanted to bring it to my family gathering and let it slither around freely because my family might find it interesting to watch. Let’s assume that there is a 1% chance that that snake might bite one of my family members and a 1% chance that a family member who was bit would die from the snake venom. In that case, I would consider to bring that snake to the family gathering. Same thing re COVID, especially since there are other alternatives to physical gatherings. One is to gather outdoors at a distance (like my family). Another is to have a virtual gathering on Zoom.