Only Progressive Lives Matter

I try not to react to everything I see on the internet for fear of becoming THAT GUY.  At first, I was going to ignore this tweet from Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama during his entire presidency, and a long-time friend regarded as his closest confidante.  Because it manages to combine both incredible stupidity, partisanship, ignorance, heartlessness, and contempt for the intelligence of her readers I decided to address it.  Here's the tweet:

From the epicenter to zero deaths. Short term sacrifice saves lives!!! https://t.co/iHJktiPX5p

— Valerie Jarrett (@ValerieJarrett) July 13, 2020

The tweet was written to support the current media narrative that states like New York and New Jersey did everything right regarding covid because they had Democratic governors and states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, which now face rising case counts, did everything wrong because they have Republican governors.

As I've said before, anyone Left or Right trying to score political points in the midst of this pandemic is a fool.  We should all be humbled by the extent to which we don't know and can't predict the course of this virus.  The virus is not interested in our politics.

As to the comparison itself.  The short-term sacrifice Jarrett refers to are the 24,000 dead so far in New York City due to covid (and that includes the single worst decision by any governor so far; Andrew Cuomo's decision to send covid positive patients back to nursing homes, leading to thousands of deaths).

New York City has 8 million people.  Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona combined have 67.5 million and, as of today, 12,700 covid deaths.  To reach the same per capita toll as New York City these four states will have to reach 203,000 deaths and New York will have to avoid a second wave.

To say New York's "short-term sacrifice" was worth it in order to condemn the states progressives dislike is misleading and stupid.  There's also a coldness to it that is morally repulsive - a Only Progressive Lives Matter tone that cheers on covid deaths in red states in order to make progressive governors look better.  At this point, no one can say that New York City "saved lives".  Her tweet is nonsense.  I can only assume Jarrett is completely innumerate or just doesn't care what the facts are and the people who follow her are too lazy and ignorant to do their own fact-checking.

I wish partisans on all sides would just shut up.