Americans of Reddit, how did we go from stockpiling toilet paper to completely ignoring the virus in a matter of months?

The other reason we don't "see" it is because the US is fucking huge, and American's don't travel. My town of ~200,000 people had our last case three weeks ago, and it was a healthcare professional who was asymptomatic, immediately isolated, and so far seems to be doing fine.

In theory, my town could re-open tomorrow and everything feels like it would be fine. And my situation isn't unique. Look at any state's maps and you'll find that, obviously, the biggest "hot spots" are metropolitan centers. And the numbers coming out of those areas are certainly scary, but people don't seem to understand that most American's don't live in a city.

Let's look at a list of the cities and states that are having surges, Florida, New York, Texas (Houston), and a few others. As someone from the midwest, I am anywhere from 850 to 1,200 miles away from any of those areas. And so while I can say that it's tragic what's going on, it also doesn't particularly affect me. Let's pretend instead of living in the US, I live in London. In that case, the nearest city near me that is experiencing a "2nd wave" is roughly Zurich or Bordeau. And me worrying about what's going on in Florida is like someone in London being worried about an outbreak in Rome.

So it's easy to see stats online "50,000 new US cases" and it's tragic, it absolutely is. But those cases are centralized to our most densely packed parts of the country and most Americans just aren't seeing the effects of COVID first hand. Which, sadly, makes it all the easier to claim "fake news" when CNN makes it seem like there is immenient death outside your front door when personal experience says you can have a block party and the only person who got sick was Jimmy who shouldn't have shotgunned that last PBR.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent