HATERS GOTTA HATE: Celebrities and the Media Shouldn’t Sneer at Coronavirus Lockdown Protesters.

It may be trivially simple for the Emmy Award-winning comic—and voice of Remy in Pixar’s Ratatouille—to stay at home, watch Netflix, order carry-out, and play video games for a few weeks. (Writer and podcaster Bridget Phetasy compared Oswalt to Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal indifference toward the hungry masses, tweeting: “Let them eat kale!”) But many auto mechanics, coffee baristas, and small business owners can’t afford this so easily. They are watching their financial situations become more and more precarious with each day that extreme social distancing continues. Oswalt suggested that the uncultured rubes are crazy to want Fuddruckers to reopen; people whose livelihoods depend upon places like Fuddruckers might see things differently.

That’s why it’s important for those criticizing misguided protesting efforts—including media figures who increasingly appear to be taking the view that you would have to be a deranged right-winger to want social distancing to end—not to resort to sneering at the less fortunate. (For example: A guest on MSNBC recently called the protesters, “the Fox News Nazi confederate death cult rump of the Republican Party.”) These are terrifying times, and the prospect of hundreds of thousands of deaths means there is very good reason for policymakers to proceed cautiously with reopening. But both federal and state governments must consider the long-term practicality of their coronavirus prevention plans, including whether people will be willing to obey stay-at-home orders for much longer.

If the cure becomes worse than the disease, pretty soon people are going to stop taking the cure.