Covid­iot. Noun. A per­son who acts like an irre­spon­si­ble idiot dur­ing the COVID-19 [nov­el coro­n­avirus] pan­dem­ic, ignor­ing sense, decen­cy, sci­ence, and pro­fes­sion­al advice lead­ing to the fur­ther spread of the virus and need­less deaths of thousands.

– User con­tributed def­i­n­i­tion on Urban Dictionary

Today, cities across the Unit­ed States wit­nessed gath­er­ings of covid­iots — peo­ple act­ing irre­spon­si­bly dur­ing a pub­lic health emer­gency by delib­er­ate­ly dis­re­gard­ing orders to stay home and stay healthy. One such gath­er­ing, fea­tur­ing dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er turned guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Tim Eyman, took place at the Capi­tol Cam­pus in Olympia, with more than two thou­sand in attendance.

KING5:

Thou­sands of pro­test­ers gath­ered at the state Capi­tol on Sun­day after­noon to ral­ly against Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order that is in effect in Wash­ing­ton until at least May 4th.

The peace­ful protest start­ed at the Capi­tol steps and drew a crowd as far down as the Tivoli Fountain.

Tyler Miller, the event orga­niz­er, said he under­stands the pub­lic health con­cerns and agrees peo­ple need to take pre­cau­tions, but the stay-at-home order takes it too far.

Miller clear­ly does not under­stand the pub­lic health con­cerns under­pin­ning the Gov­er­nor’s stay home, stay healthy orders, or else he would­n’t have put his life and oth­ers’ lives at risk by ille­gal­ly orga­niz­ing a large gath­er­ing of peo­ple today.

Yes, the First Amend­ment guar­an­tees the right to peace­ably assemble.

But no right is absolute. If peo­ple are allowed to do what­ev­er they want, then they can deprive oth­er peo­ple of their free­doms. And that defeats the pur­pose of hav­ing a Bill of Rights in the first place. Peo­ple who get sick and die from the nov­el coro­n­avirus can­not exer­cise their First Amend­ment rights… or any oth­er rights guar­an­teed to them by either the fed­er­al or state constitutions.

There is no lib­er­ty or pur­suit of hap­pi­ness with­out life.

Life comes first.

The gov­er­nor’s orders are intend­ed to save lives and com­pli­ance with them has saved lives. Wash­ing­ton and the Left Coast have showed the coun­try how to “flat­ten the curve” and pre­vent the health­care sys­tem from becom­ing over­whelmed and par­a­lyzed from an explo­sion of SARS-CoV­‑2 cases.

What makes COVID-19 so insid­i­ous and dan­ger­ous is that it’s extreme­ly infec­tious. In a video that explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty last month, Hugh Mont­gomery explained the dif­fer­ence between “nor­mal flu” and COVID-19.

THIS THIS THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THIS. Please watch and share. Bril­liant­ly and sim­ply put. pic.twitter.com/LAlAvq0jg7

— Greg James (@gregjames) March 22, 2020

BGR’s Zach Epstein wrote a great post break­ing down this video.

If you infect 1.3 peo­ple with the flu, and they infect 1.3 peo­ple, and so on, after that has hap­pened 10 times you will have been direct­ly respon­si­ble for giv­ing the flu to 14 peo­ple. Do the math.

If you infect 3 peo­ple with COVID-19, and they infect 3 peo­ple, and they infect three peo­ple… you will have been respon­si­ble for a whop­ping 59,049 peo­ple. Do the math.

Peo­ple with COVID-19 can be asymp­to­matic for as long as 2 weeks before symp­toms first start to present. In fact, it is now believed that many peo­ple with COVID-19 infec­tions might nev­er present any symp­toms at all. The only way to be cer­tain you don’t have it is with a neg­a­tive test, and nov­el coro­n­avirus tests are still very dif­fi­cult to come by. That means the only way to be cer­tain you don’t have it and infect oth­er peo­ple, or to be cer­tain that you aren’t infect­ed by some­one else who has COVID-19, is to shel­ter in place.

Hence Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stay home, stay healthy orders.

The right wingers who showed up at the Capi­tol Cam­pus today evi­dent­ly have no under­stand­ing of the sci­ence under­pin­ning the pub­lic health strat­e­gy that has been imple­ment­ed to com­bat COVID-19. Their igno­rance is dangerous.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, their ille­gal gath­er­ing drew a rebuke from Inslee himself.

Said the Governor:

“I hear every day from peo­ple who want to go back to work, open their busi­ness­es and spend time with their friends and fam­i­ly. Most of them are doing what must be done first to accom­plish that: They’re stay­ing home.”

“These are dif­fi­cult and frus­trat­ing times. I under­stand the urgency of this cri­sis. How­ev­er, this is not the time to halt the progress we have made.”

“I encour­age every­one in our state to stay home, stay healthy and, if you need to go out, prac­tice ade­quate phys­i­cal distancing.

“Com­ments in the news today by some Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors call­ing for ‘open rebel­lion,’ claim­ing a ‘deep state’ plot and oth­er rad­i­cal state­ments are irre­spon­si­ble and could need­less­ly lead to more peo­ple get­ting sick.”

“I hope Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive lead­ers will speak out against such rhetoric from their mem­bers. I sup­port free speech. But crowd counts or speech­es won’t deter­mine our course. This isn’t about pol­i­tics. It can only be about doing what is best for the health of all Washingtonians.”

We agree.

It would be one thing if these right wing pro­tes­tors were only putting their own lives at risk. But they’re not. Covid­iots aren’t just a dan­ger to them­selves, they’re a men­ace to oth­ers. A covid­iot who catch­es the virus may have no idea they have it, and may end up giv­ing it to oth­er peo­ple who are duti­ful­ly try­ing to stay home except for occa­sion­al trips to obtain essen­tial sup­plies like food or medicine.

Many of the rest­less right wingers out protest­ing were armed with Trump signs. They appear to be very con­cerned that the pan­dem­ic and the eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion con­nect­ed to it could sink Don­ald Trump’s prospects for reelection.

They wor­ship Trump, and a big part of Trump’s “game plan” for reelec­tion in 2020 was to claim that he is an eco­nom­ic genius. But it’s hard for a pres­i­dent to argue his pres­ence in office is good for the econ­o­my when the econ­o­my is doing badly.

They are thus as des­per­ate as Trump is for shut­tered busi­ness­es to reopen and for every­thing to go back to the way it was before COVID-19.

But there is no going back. We can­not return to the past. We can only move for­ward. The short­est road to recov­ery entails phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. As hard as that may be for some peo­ple to prac­tice, it’s absolute­ly necessary.

Busi­ness­es and economies can be rebuilt. But unlike God, we can­not raise the dead. Once we lose some­one to COVID-19, they’re gone and we can’t bring them back. You might think that peo­ple who proud­ly describe them­selves as “pro-life” would under­stand this bet­ter than any­one. Sad­ly, you would be mistaken.