Were you hoping New York wouldn’t pay SC back for our quarantine order? Fugedaboutit!

When America is going through a crisis, our individual states should seek to bolster their counterparts, not vilify them.

Unfortunately, our state, Florida and Texas made a great show of rejecting that approach this spring when they fell over each other to issue mandatory quarantine orders for any visitors arriving from three Northeast states — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — that were grappling with high numbers of COVID-19 cases.

Instead of choosing to give meaningful support to neighbors besieged by COVID-19, our state and others chose to take cheap political shots at their expense.

Instead of choosing to find ways to show our neighbors that we are united as Americans, our state and others chose to exploit an easy way to stigmatize them as “those” Americans.

Instead of choosing to offer our neighbors outstretched, helping hands, our state and others chose to merely offer them upraised middle fingers.

No surprise

So it should be no surprise that as our state battles with rising levels of new COVID-19 cases each day, South Carolinians are now being told they must quarantine if they travel to New York, New Jersey or Connecticut — all of which are seeing clear declines in their COVID-19 numbers.

Did anyone really think that New York’s abrasive Gov. Andrew Cuomo wouldn’t remember how South Carolina followed Florida’s lead in kicking his state when it was down during its darkest days of fighting COVID-19?

Did anyone really believe that Cuomo would forgo the opportunity to give our state the “I got your quarantine order — right here!” treatment now that we are going through our darkest days of seeing more and more South Carolinians contract COVID-19?

Of course, Cuomo would rush to inflict some form of payback — and, of course, New York’s governor would rush to do so faster than a New York minute.

So the truth is that the current Northern backlash against our state was as preventable as it was predictable.

And, no, there is no comfort to be found in the fact that most of the fury up North is focused on Florida because of the heavy-handed tactics of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who earlier this year set up checkpoints at his state’s borders to “catch” New Yorkers and others as they arrived — but is now grappling with skyrocketing COVID-19 rates so alarming that he’s closed bars in Florida.

That doesn’t change the fact that we South Carolinians are now the ones being stigmatized by other Americans as COVID-19 rages on — and it’s just as unedifying and unproductive now as it was when we were doing the stigmatizing not that long ago.

The current reversal of fate should serve as yet another lesson in why states and regions across our country should always resist the temptation to use crises that affect all of us as opportunities to divide many of us.

Indeed, when that temptation does surface, it would be far better to remember the catchphrase that’s long been known to be a favorite among New Yorkers:

“Fugedaboutit!”

This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 6:15 PM with the headline "Were you hoping New York wouldn’t pay SC back for our quarantine order? Fugedaboutit!."