Rich Europeans Flee Cities, New York Times Disapproves

For quite a few centuries, cities have been unhealthy places in times of contagion. Long before people understood the causes of diseases, experience showed that people were better off to wait out a plague in the countryside, if they could. (Just ask Boccaccio.) That is still true today, and the New York Times is offended: “Rich Europeans Flee Virus for Second Homes, Spreading Fear and Fury.”

On their peaceful island off France’s Atlantic Coast, some of the locals watched, with growing dread and rage, the images from Paris. As rumors began circulating about an imminent nationwide lockdown to stem the coronavirus outbreak, hordes of Parisians jammed into trains, an odd surfboard sometimes sticking out of the crowd.

There was no doubt about their destination.

“Irresponsible and selfish,” thought Dr. Cyrille Vartanian, one of the six physicians on Noirmoutier. With some time to spare — Paris was roughly five hours away — a local mayor, Noël Faucher, moved to block the only bridge to the mainland. But the national authorities said it would be illegal.

Sounds like Rhode Island and New York.

Perhaps more than anything else, the influx into second homes has ignited anger over what the global pandemic is laying bare every day: the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Because every single thing, if you are the New York Times, must be about the “ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.” Whether that gap is “ever widening” in any meaningful sense is a subject for another day. For now, a reader writes:

It’s TERRIBLE, but I do have questions…questioning the questioners, so to speak.

Where is Pinch Sulzberger hanging out? Is he at his estate in Southampton? Or with the peons in New York City?

Same for Maureen Dowd…and ALL the pontificating “essential” Timesmen: where are they?

Full disclosure for the MSM!

Yes, is Paul Krugman riding the subway? Inquiring minds want to know! Certainly “essential” publishers, editors, reporters and media personalities taking to the countryside is not a sign of the “ever widening gap between the rich and the poor,” right? Right?

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