The Plague and the Downfall of Reason

Its been about 15 months since the federal government first took action against the spread of covid in the US.  March 17^th of last year, President Trump and his covid response team announced their “15 days to slow the spread” campaign.  Then came the “30 days to slow the spread” campaign when it was clear the first attempt was insufficient.  These campaigns came with guidelines for the closing of much of the American economy.  I remember watching the news March 17^th…watching the Dow Jones take a nosedive and hoping it would not be the end of days.  It wasn’t, but it certainly looked like we were in the neighborhood.  A lot of us were laid off soon after…particularly in food services.  Some of us were deemed “essential” and allowed to continue going to work, mingling at a distance with the rest of the “essentials.”  Some were deemed “non-essential” and were either laid off or we worked from home in the safety of our own little cocoons.  We were told to stay home, don’t go out in public except as completely necessary.  We filed into our offices one at a time to collect laptops, monitors, and anything else we needed to continue being productive.  We had groceries delivered or we picked them up curbside.  We ran out of toilet paper and scurried around town looking for even the cheapest of quality.  We made masks and mailed them to friends and family.  We praised doctors and nurses, cops and firefighters, teachers, and grocery workers for doing their best under difficult circumstances.  Temporary hospitals were built to handle the wave of infected which would inevitably show up with no beds to put them in.  Freezer trucks were brought in as temporary morgues.  It was grim.  We were on the precipice of a Stephen King novel.  It was scary but looking back on it now, it was a wonder.  We were all together (while staying six feet apart) much as we were following 9/11.  We checked on neighbors, friends, and family and offered help, cleaning supplies, toilet paper.  We opened the economy again…a bit slowly at first.  Stores and restaurants had capacity limits, mask mandates, social distancing guidelines.  When positivity rates went up and ICU beds became scarcer, we closed down again.    We did what we had to do to survive.

Except some folks thought it was better to let the virus spread, kill some of the population, and let the rest get the antibodies.  ”Herd Immunity.”  It required very little…continue to socialize, and work, and do away with the face masks…oh, and bury the dead of course.  Britain and Sweden tried it.  Many died, but it was acceptable losses.  Some believed it was no worse than a bad flu season.  True, the mortality rate in the U.S. has decreased over time to about 1.8% of all infections.  However, the US has such a large infection rate (as of May-15th)…33 million cases…so 1.8% amounts to nearly 590k deaths.  This makes our death rate per 100k people equal to 178.03 according to Johns Hopkins….which is the eighteenth highest of any country.  Not so bad as far as the mortality rate is concerned…credit the world class doctors, nurses, and healthcare in our country.  But why such a high infection rate?  33 million sick in a country of 330 million….higher than huge populations like China, Mexico, and Brazil.  You’d think if we were all using similar mitigation strategies that our infection numbers would be in-line with countries around the globe.  Are we just a huge collection of doorknob-lickers?  Is it because so many of us refuse to “live in fear?”  Are masks really so terrible?  Do all of you really feel the need to worship God in a huge room full of other people (isn’t God everywhere?  Why do you have to go to His house?)?  Maybe some folks just don’t want to be told what to do (I can understand that….I don’t either)?  But they wear seatbelts in cars, right?  Stop at red lights and such things?

Or is it something else?  Lets have a closer look at these questions one at a time, shall we?

A Huge Collection of Doorknob-Lickers

Go walk around in public and just watch people.  They’re really disgusting.  Besides littering (which I’ll cover in a Pet Peeves post), people will leave just about anything in a shopping cart knowing full well someone has to dispose of it somewhere…used Kleenex, napkins, cups, cans, bottles, plates, bowls, utensils.  Nasty bitches!  And then someone will use that cart…and put groceries in it! 

Raise your hand if you never found a used diaper in a parking lot…look at all of you with your hands down!  These people are basically dogs leaving their shit wherever its convenient!  Assholes!

How many times have you personally witnessed someone leave a bathroom stall or urinal and walk right past the soap and sink headed for the exit.  Goddamn it!  I have to touch that door handle!  What the hell is wrong with people? 

Yes, we definitely have some germy bastards walking around and touching everything.  Okay, but is this an American thing or no?  And if soap is the yardstick of civilization (thank you, Tyler Durden and the Paper Street Soap Company), then I guess we walk among neanderthals.

Living in Fear

This is my favorite.  The rest of us, the ones who prefer to avoid the potentially fatal virus, are living in fear while the heroes of the pandemic are running all over the place spreading the virus with no concern for themselves or their family.

Really?  You’re not afraid of anything?  Everyone is afraid of something.  Most people are smart enough to avoid danger when it can be avoided.  This is the reason we don’t go walking through open fields during lightning storms, or use gas grills indoors, or a million other things we know are dangerous.

Except these folks tend to carry firearms everywhere they go.  Is that why you don’t live in fear?  Because you can shoot any virus that blows your direction.  Why the guns?  What are you afraid of?  Don’t say you don’t live in fear…you absolutely live in fear every day that liberals will take your guns away…that snowflakes will move to your state and vote…that transvestites are going to pee in the same place as your wife and daughter (careful of the foreshadowing here, Steve…don’t give away the cash and prizes just yet).  I see it every day in my Facebook feed.  You’re afraid of liberalism, but not germs.

They have no concern for their own health, but they also have no concern for others’ either.  Don’t you people have parents you would prefer to remain breathing?  I understand your children are immune to the virus…except kids are not immune, it just doesn’t affect them the same as us old folks.  And they can still pass it on to you, to me, to their teachers, to their grandparents.  Still no concern?  You’re so brave you’ll risk the health and lives of other people?  That’s not how bravery works!

There’s a very old notion which equates bravery to stupidity.  There’s another which logically suggests there is no bravery without fear.  I’d combine these notions to suggest bravery without fear is stupidity.

So, I don’t think we can attribute the spread of the virus in America to bravery.  But I don’t believe its due to stupidity either.  I’d say the more appropriate word is “denial.”

The Evil of Masks

I personally know people who still think masks are intended to protect the wearer…or maybe they know better but conveniently forgot…more likely its a case of selective ignorance.  We’ve been in this over fourteen months now and I can’t tell you how many times I heard doctors and scientists explain how masks work…many times.  In short, a mask does not keep germs out…it helps keep the wearer’s germs in.  We’ve all seen surgeons on TV, right? Maybe you’ve seen them in the real world? Maybe you’ve seen a surgeon right before he’s about to cut you open? A surgeon is not worried about catching your germs…he’s trying to keep his germs out of you when you’re open to the world. 

The virus typically travels out of a person’s nose and mouth on tiny droplets of spit and mucous when they breath, or speak, or sneeze, or cough.  A mask helps catch these droplets before they get into the air where someone else can pick it up and get infected.  No, its not 100% effective, but neither are guns, guard dogs, or burglar alarms…but use all three together and you’ve got a pretty decent home defense.  So, masks together with multiple other mitigation practices will significantly reduce the spread of the virus.  That’s the gist…make sense? Now go forth and stop being ignorant.

Last August before school started, there was a picture floating the interweb of children in a classroom wearing masks and sitting at their little desks behind plexiglass.  The comment that stuck in my mind was, “CHILD ABUSE!”  Really?  You’re not afraid of the virus, but you’re afraid a sneeze guard and a face diaper is going to traumatize little Johnny?  Maybe if their teacher or Gramma and/or Grampa die from covid, little Johnny will be traumatized from thinking he was the one that gave them the virus.  He might be even more traumatized (I would think so anyway). 

Then there’s the argument about masks trapping and growing bacteria on your face.  This seems to be a legitimate concern although the bacteria collecting in your mask is already present in your body.  But there’s a simple solution…put on a fresh mask every once in a while if you have to wear one for extended periods.  Oh, but that’s a pain in the ass…carrying around multiple masks and washing them every other day?  Or buying so many disposable masks and wasting so much material?  For the safety of your loved ones, yourself, and the general public…its not so bad, right?

Maybe some folks just don’t want to be told what to do?  I can understand that.  Being a libertarian, I don’t much like that either.  But they wear seatbelts in cars, right?  And we have traffic laws.  Shouldn’t personal and public safety supercede personal liberties?  If so, (I know the next argument) where do we draw the line?  How many have to die before we all realize the solution is not so bad?  President Trump said one death was too many…we all know that was bullshit.  If only one person had died from covid, we would’ve never even heard of it.

For the most part, I don’t have anything against masks.  I do prefer to see a person’s facial expression while speaking to them (this is the reason I hate clowns).  Also, everyone sounds muffled wearing a mask.  There was once or twice when I had a little trouble breathing while exerting myself.  But I don’t wear one all day like many who have to go out in the world each day.  I can understand why people hate them and I certainly understand why people with breathing problems can’t wear them.

But Really…

The simple answer is politics.  This whole plague was politicized from the outset during an election year of the most polarizing president since Abraham Lincoln.  That’s right, I compare Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln (oh, the tables have turned!).  We knew he would be entertaining when he first threw his hat in the ring.  He was already a reality-TV star.  He said whatever crept up into his orange noggin without any filter whatsoever.  And he owned casinos all over the place.  Who better to put on the evening news every night?  Frankly, I thought he was doing a great job as president…he was a total ass as a human being, but he did a good number of good things for America and for Americans.  And I thought he did a great job when the pandemic began.  Remember when the virus began popping up outside of China and he closed travel to the US from China?  Of course you do…he mentioned it many many times during the campaign.  All the Democrats called him xenophobic for doing it, but then later said he should have done more.  But can you imagine the reaction from the left if he’d shut down ALL travel into the US on Jan-31^st instead of just travel from China?  I’m sure they would’ve impeached him for that too. 

But then a funny thing happened about 3-4 months into the pandemic.  Trump stopped attending the daily press conferences with the Covid Response Team (my favorite part of these was watching Trump fight with the reporters).  He seemed to be on the right track…he’d activated the Defense Production Act to get ventilators manufactured as fast as possible, he initiated Operation Warp Speed to get vaccines developed, researched, trialed and approved as fast as possible, he had temporary hospitals built and ready to receive overload.  Then he pretty much did a blackjack dealer move (showing his hands were empty) and gave the whole thing over to VP Pence and the governors.  There was a critical event approaching on November 3^rd which not only demanded his full attention, it meant he had to pretend the current situation was all good.  He had to get everyone back to work regardless of the risks and that meant he had to get kids back into classrooms.  But closing down the economy was an extreme measure…it shook us up to the point we couldn’t just forget it ever happened.  People were dropping left and right in September and October…we couldn’t just pretend it was going to “miraculously” turn around as Trump predicted (well, most of us couldn’t).  He held rallies with thousands of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder, mostly without masks.  He went so far as to ridicule a Fox News host for wearing a mask at one of his rallies.  So then it became a stigma…conservatives didn’t want to be seen in a mask because they didn’t want to look like a liberal.  There was (and is) a whole spectrum of insanity associated with the conservative view of the pandemic.  Some of us followed Trump’s lead and believed the virus was nothing to worry about, some of us believed it was a hoax.  Some of us even believed it was manufactured by Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates and released on the world so they could make money on the vaccine.  Some referred to the disease as a “plan-demic,” suggesting it was all some elaborate conspiracy cooked up by George Soros and the Democratic leadership.  Whether you believe any of it or all of it, its clear the spread of the disease in the US was at least partially due to an all out assault to win the presidential election and/or stop liberalism from taking over American politics. 

Honestly, have we ever been so close to civil war in the past 150 years?  We had citizens storming the capital in a sincere attempt to disrupt a presidential election and threatening to hang the Vice President of the United States (who was also the leader of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force).

Beyond Politics

Now that Trump lost and Biden is in office, their response is to deny the science that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed successfully gave us…along with several effective vaccines.  They claim the science was rushed.  They say the vaccines are unproven.  They say the vaccines are dangerous.  To be fair, anti-vaccine propaganda was proliferated long before there was a corona virus.  Humans have been denying science since we were calling it witchcraft and burning the innocent on stakes.  We still have people claiming the earth is flat.  If today’s doctors and scientists are standing on the shoulders of giants, today’s science-deniers are digging holes where those giants once stood.

True, the clinical trials were rushed as were the FDA approvals for emergency use…thank you, President Trump.  I was skeptical at first…I’m the first sceptic out of the gate when it comes to the federal government. But I happen to know a neuroscience doctor who told me its not the President or the federal government running these trials…its actual scientists and researchers working tirelessly to prove the efficacy of these vaccines.  They know the scientific method can’t be compromised.  And the research on RNA vaccines has been underway for many years, not just since Covid-19 arrived.  My wife was one of the first in line to get it so she could continue to teach high school math in a room full of kids without risking the health of me or my mom who lives with us (both with underlying conditions).  When it came my turn, I rolled up my sleeve as well.  I was a little nervous, but excited to put all the viral concerns behind me.

Now I’m called a “coward” or a “sheep” for having listened to the government and doing what they told me was best for me.  I’m told to “wake up” and stop believing what the liberal media is spewing in an effort to control me and bring down our traditional way of life.  And they compare us to the Jews who were forced to wear the Star of David to identify them on the street.  And I suppose I’ve willingly walked into the ovens with a smile on my face.  This is what’s most insulting…I’M the idiot, not them.  I’M the reason the country is going to hell.  I’M letting the government destroy the country from within…by wearing a mask and getting vaccinated.

Those of us who wore masks, washed hands, socially distanced, and got the vaccine when it became available have done nothing but try to protect ourselves and families from a potentially fatal disease.  And in the process, we tried to keep from spreading it to those who didn’t care, or didn’t believe, or didn’t bother.  Yet WE are the assholes in the eyes of the ultra-conservatives and the conspiracy theorists…the ones who are selfish enough to deny the danger so they can go on with their simple self-absorbed lives and not have to worry about themselves or their loved-ones.  It must be nice to be so blissfully ignorant and misinformed. The mindless are immune to mind-control.

Who’s To Blame?   

Its what we do when something terrible happens…find someone to blame.  There’s a long list of suspects.  Starting with the guy who ate a bat from a Chinese wet market, the Wuhan lab which did experiments on a super-virus, and all the way down to Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates who cooked up this scheme to become fuckzillionaires (nevermind Gates is already filthy rich and gives a shit-ton to charity every year).  It doesn’t matter anymore.  We’ll never agree on a single cause so we’ll never agree on a solution.  I think we’ve proven humans can’t be trusted to keep themselves safe from the forces of nature…we may as well be living in a Godzilla movie…and maybe that’s for the best.  One day something much worse will come along and that’ll sort it out for us.  I call myself an optimist and believe me, this is my idea of an optimistic outcome…twisted and sad, but optimistic.

The truth is we don’t have anyone to blame except ourselves.  Its human nature to be biased, to bury our heads in the sand, to fear what we don’t understand.  Its in our DNA.  We’re jerks!  Want proof?  Go take a drive and observe people around you.  They’re all assholes.  What you probably don’t realize is so are you.

Okay, I might be a little cynical.

-Big Steve