Opinion: If virus goes, it will be by science

Past behavior predicts future behavior. We’re creatures of habit but we’re also capable of learning from our mistakes and improving our behavior.

Right now, with this pandemic, we could go either way. We could learn from our missteps and do a better job containing COVID-19 through mask wearing, social distancing and other precautionary behaviors, or we could ignore what’s been working in other countries and continue to allow it to spread across the U.S. until a vaccine is developed and publicly distributed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying we might have a vaccine by the end of the year, then maybe good science will beat bad behavior and we’ll finally get out from under this pandemic.

In the meantime, let’s recognize the reality we’re in: It’s been six months since the U.S. experienced its first COVID-19 case and we still don’t have it contained. New Mexico has actually done better than other areas of the country but we’re still suffering through it. Our seven-day averages for new cases have been increasing since mid-June, so now Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is again extending the current state restrictions.

The mask mandate, staying away from crowds and staying at home as much as possible are our best shots to mitigate the virus’ spread, but a lot of people simply aren’t cooperating. It’s hard to believe we’re going to get a handle on all this when so many people see it as a political issue rather than a health crisis.

Meanwhile, school’s starting, remotely at first in New Mexico, with hopes of some in-school instruction right after Labor Day. Our kids need to be back in school, but we’ve got to face the fact that as long as the virus is spreading, our students and their teachers have a greater chance of picking up the virus at school and taking it back home to their family. Real tragedies will befall our families if that starts happening, politics be damned.

Meanwhile, we’re approaching an incredibly consequential presidential election, and sabotage is in the air. President Trump is working on another Big Lie, this one that voting by mail will corrupt the process. There’s no evidence to support his claims, but apparently he’s thinking that if he can’t win the election honestly he’ll muddy the waters and contest the results.

In other words, he’s going about as low as a candidate can go, by trying to invalidate the election and tear deeper into the nation’s divisions.

If I had my druthers, I’d like to see people toss aside the absentee and vote-by-mail approaches and physically vote early and in-person. Of course, there’s this pesky pandemic, which is encouraging people to vote long distance instead.

With a lot more people voting absentee and by mail, the results may well be delayed. The worse-case scenario is that the count will go on for days, maybe even weeks, while Trump pounds away at de-legitimizing it.

That’s why I plan to vote in person; I want my vote counted in the tallies on election night, Nov. 3.

Incredibly, some Trump supporters believe this pandemic was all made up to destroy their president’s re-election bid. “You watch,” I heard one Trump supporter say the other day, “it’ll magically go away after the election.”

You know, she might be right. Except it won’t be by magic.

It will be by science.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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