Texas or Florida are representative of the density of the US. If the mass shut downs had been limited to NY and NJ, without the media working everyone into a frenzy about beach goers in Florida, people in those other states wouldn’t be so upset.

We’re not a single country. We’re 50 different states with vastly different requirements. NYC and NJ did need the extreme shut downs. In fact, they should have shut down earlier and harder. South Dakota, Texas, etc., did not. Many sparse states like Oregon overreacted and shut down more than they needed to.

Of course, nobody can predict these things. Mistakes happen. What drives me nuts is that the same media that flipped out because not all states were taking the drastic measures that were needed in NYC is going to peddle a narrative about what happened that totally glosses over the lesson that those states didn’t really need to take such drastic measures.

> Many sparse states like Oregon

Just like anywhere else, conditions inside a particular state are like conditions inside the whole country, i.e. not consistent and comparable. A large chunk of Oregon is practically empty. Then there is Portland, which has 60% of the entire population of the state.

Locking down Portland arguably made sense. Locking down rural Oregon not as much.

I can’t stress what a huge outlier the NYC/NJ area is. Portland has a population density 1/5 as much as NYC. It has half the population density of DC, which itself probably shut down more than it needed to.

But yes, locking down Portland was at least plausible. Locking down my wife’s mother in law down in Lincoln City, however, generated a lot of ill will to Governor Brown that I can’t say was undeserved.

I agree on all points. Ideologically I should agree with our governor, but I find that her response to the pandemic has been pretty awful. She's not alone, I suppose, it seems like many (most?) state governors were only qualified to hold their position in a time of peace, few seem to have stepped up to the challenge of the coronavirus and taken charge as leaders.

For the longest time we didn't have anything even approximating an actual metric for when we could reopen things, and then all of the sudden we just decided to go ahead with it. I think her hand got forced on that, because when everyone realizes you don't have a plan, they start to make their own.

Sorry for the politics. I just find the entire situation very frustrating.

Lincoln City from when I’ve been there had has a lot of tourists (I presume you meant your mother in law) compared to say Coos Bay and would hardly be that isolated

Lincoln City is pretty sparse until the summer! (I meant my wife's grandmother. Not even close!)