Now let us imagine that the reverse were true. Imagine that Georgia and North Carolina — two contiguous states that, like the New York metro area, have a combined total of 21 million people — had 18,690 COVID-19 deaths, while metro New York had 858 deaths (the number of deaths in North Carolina and Georgia combined).
Do you think the New York metro area would close its schools, stores, restaurants and small businesses? Would every citizen of the New York area, with the few exceptions of those engaged in absolutely necessary work, be locked in their homes for months? Would New Yorkers accept the decimation of their economic and social lives because North Carolina and Georgia (or, even more absurdly, Colorado, Montana or the rest of what most New Yorkers regard as “flyover” country) had 18,960 deaths, while they had a mere 858?
It is, of course, possible. But I suspect that anyone with an open mind assumes that New Yorkers would not put up with ruining their economic and social lives and putting tens of millions of people out of work because of coronavirus deaths in North Carolina and Georgia, let alone Montana and Idaho (and, for the record, I would have agreed with them).
Even more telling, the media, which controls American public opinion more than any other institution, including the presidency and Congress — but not churches and synagogues, which is why they loathe evangelicals, traditional Catholics, faithful Mormons and Orthodox Jews — would not be as fixated on closing down the country if it were killing far more people in some Southern, Midwestern, Mountain or Western states than in New York City.
The media is New York-based and New York-centered. New York is America. The rest of the country, with the partial exception of Los Angeles (also a media center) and Silicon Valley, is an afterthought.
ConservativeChick