Name: No, Governor Cuomo, COVID-19 Is Not 'Just a Metaphor'
Brand: reason.com
SKU: reason-com-98
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

No, Governor Cuomo, COVID-19 Is Not 'Just a Metaphor'

preview

Democratic National Convention host Eva Longoria introduced Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday night as the man who led New York "with clear direction and memorable powerpoints" during its coronavirus outbreak. Cuomo then spoke for a few minutes about how his state "climbed the impossible mountain, and now we are on the other side."He did not mention that the path to the summit involved the deaths of more than 30,000 New Yorkers—an appallingly high death toll that was likely worsened by Cuomo's executive order to readmit elderly citizens who were sick with the virus. Far from being a beacon of sane leadership, Cuomo has continuously himself at of the pandemic.Perhaps it's unsurprising that Cuomo failed to address his myriad failures. But at the very least, he should not have minimized the horror of what occurred under his watch. It was something of a shock, then, when Cuomo referred to COVID-19 as "just a metaphor" for the country's more serious political divisions."We know that our problems go beyond the COVID virus," said Cuomo. "COVID is the symptom, not the illness. Our nation is in crisis, and in many ways, COVID is just a metaphor. A virus attacks when the body is weak and cannot defend itself. Over the past few years, America's body politic has been weakened. The divisions have been growing deeper. The anti-Semitism, the anti-Latino, the anti-immigrant fervor, the racism in Charlottesville…and in Minnesota, where the life was squeezed from Mr. [George] Floyd."It's true that the country is facing plenty of other problems, including the government's ongoing mistreatment of immigrants, lack of accountability in law enforcement, racism, and anti-Semitism. But to say that the coronavirus is, like these other problems, merely some symptom of a larger problem is absurd and offensive. It minimizes the comparative horror of COVID-19—a once-in-a-century disaster that has already killed more than 170,000 Americans and will undoubtedly kill many more. The coronavirus is neither a metaphor, nor one issue among many, nor a symptom of some other disease. It is the disease and by far the most important issue facing the next president.Our political divisions are frustrating but thankfully nowhere near as fatal. In 2003, the prominent conservative Republican senator proposed an amendment that would have eliminated the requirement that the president be a "natural born citizen." After failing at the one thing people think they need from government, Minneapolis is getting tough on making damaged citizens pay up. If so, that could be really good news for the rest of the world. Even if all presidential votes were cast through the mail and sent on the same day, they would amount to 30 percent of a single day's volume. Punishing families for struggling with distance learning is doubly wrong.

Democratic National Convention host Eva Longoria introduced Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday night as the man who led New York "with clear direction and memorable powerpoints" during its coronavirus outbreak. Cuomo then spoke for a few minutes about how his state "climbed the impossible mountain, and now we are on the other side."He did not mention that the path to the summit involved the deaths of more than 30,000 New Yorkers—an appallingly high death toll that was likely worsened by Cuomo's executive order to readmit elderly citizens who were sick with the virus. Far from being a beacon of...

public

@reason senior editor. 2016 @forbes 30 Under 30 list. Author of "Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump." Available now: http://bit.ly/2t6lO23

Robby Soave

Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune. Reason was founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander (1947–2011), a student at Boston University, as a more-or-less monthly mimeographed publication. In 1970 it was purchased by Robert W. Poole Jr., Manuel S. Klausner, and Tibor R. Machan, who set it on a more regular publishing schedule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(magazine)

reason.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

No, Governor Cuomo, COVID-19 Is Not 'Just a Metaphor'

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS