{"id":3501,"date":"2020-08-21T07:15:23","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T11:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2020-09-04T08:06:51","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T12:06:51","slug":"what-to-do-in-a-public-health-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3501","title":{"rendered":"What to Do in a Public Health Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"What<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had a completely different cartoon mapped out when I sat down to draw, and then this story broke: Michigan reaches $600M settlement in Flint water crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I started again from scratch. It didn’t take me long to find parallels between the current coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Flint water crisis \u2014 how Flint was kind of a “canary in the coal mine” for what we as a nation are experiencing now. Well, I suppose it’d be more correct to say that the Flint water crisis could have been<\/em> a canary in the coal mine. (We all would have needed to notice and care that the canary died for the analogy to play through.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here’s what I really find notable: There are three basic types of consequences for these tragedies \u2014 death, chronic health conditions, and money. Which one is most likely to motivate people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d say that evidence shows death is the least effective. We can’t (or simply don’t want to) relate to it. It’s too abstract, especially as numbers grow. Chronic health conditions are a bit more tangible \u2014 we can all imagine being sick. Perhaps not lead poisoning or lung damage sick, but sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I think the best motivator is money. More specifically, our<\/strong> money, taxpayer<\/strong> money! The idea of somebody wasting our hard-earned money is pretty much what motivated this country to be a country. Perhaps we can channel that. A completely avoidable health crisis has now cost Michigan taxpayers $1 billion (this recent $600 million added to the $400 million already spent). That would seem like enough to get us to listen to medical experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a completely different cartoon mapped out when I sat down to draw, and then this story broke: Michigan reaches $600M settlement in Flint water crisis. So I started again from scratch. It didn’t take me long to find parallels between the current coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Flint water crisis \u2014 how Flint was kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3510,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/3510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}