‘Risky’ Behaviors
‘Risky’ Behaviors
State of the Union: The Biden White House is wary of calling certain behaviors “risky.”
Take yourself back to 2020. Your child’s school was closed. You couldn’t visit aging parents in a nursing home. You couldn’t host a wedding, sit indoors at a restaurant, or invite more than seven people to a graveside funeral service. You were told to stay home to stop the spread of a virus that may not have posed a meaningful risk to you and did not pose a meaningful risk to the overwhelming majority of the population.
In the earliest days of the pandemic, without the benefit of hindsight or knowledge about the nature of the virus and its transmission, some of these measures may have been understandable. By early April, though, we knew that the virus effectively didn’t spread outdoors, and states continued enacting draconian restrictions on public gatherings.
I encourage you to recall the sacrifices you were asked to make as you read what Demetre Daskalakis, the Biden administration’s national monkeypox response deputy coordinator, said on Sunday about the type of behavior that facilitates the spread of monkeypox:
Stigma tends to be a barrier to testing, a barrier to vaccination—really addressing stigma intentionally and making sure we get the word out in a way that supports people’s joy as opposed to calling them “risky.” One of the things to think about is that one person’s idea of risk is another person’s idea of a great festival or Friday night, for that matter. We kind of have to embrace that with joy and make sure that folks know how to keep themselves safe.
Maybe you should have told authorities you were going to a leather orgy.
The post ‘Risky’ Behaviors appeared first on The American Conservative.