Thanksgiving 2020: Southern Hospitality or Southerner Hospitalization?

I don’t presume to know what everyone in America did for the Thanksgiving holiday, but it sure doesn’t seem like very many people I know heeded any sort of advice from health experts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For example, my family — despite my protests — decided that we should actually go a bit further than just holding our usual festivities unchanged, and invited extra people outside of the 16 members of our family who showed up to spend four or five hours in the same room. Yep, we brought in more people, and some of them were quite old. The line between their perverted, bad faith “southern hospitality” and an increase in “southerner hospitalizations” is linear and quite short, I reckon. And of course, our venue was decorated with a multitude of Trump signs and flags; sommeliers of political symbolism would’ve nutted over what an apt pairing it was.

Believe me, I let them know what I thought about it, but I’m sure it wasn’t just my ignorant relatives who intentionally flew in the face of expert recommendations. A lot of people tried to justify their normal get togethers by saying things like “well, what if this is your last thanksgiving with some of your elderly family members”, but my response to that is the rather obvious “it’s almost certainly going to be their last one if you give them COVID”.

If my perceptions are representative of the South or of the United States as a whole — and I hope they aren't — then it’s fair to say that Americans are remarkably selfish and short sighted. This is a grim prediction, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see 1.5 million positive COVID tests this week, Monday-Friday.

Wear a mask. Don’t attend events with crowds. Don’t be a dick.