Americans have finally gotten back their God-given freedom! After months of being ordered to stay at home and to social distance, it’s time to partay!
Crowds all over the country are packing pools, parks and beaches for the big Memorial Day weekend. No masks, no distancing, no problem! The coronavirus has been defeated, right? And, anyway, wasn’t it all a hoax?
Ignoring public safety guidelines or just misinterpreting the loosening of coronavirus restrictions, we are seeing videos and photos of people eating, drinking and swimming in close proximity. One photo shared by station KSDK in Missouri shows dozens of people crammed on an outdoor patio underneath a sign reading, “Please practice social distancing.”
Unfortunately for those who believe the war against covid-19 has been won (I wonder where they could have gotten such an idea?), some will contract the virus and a few may die. Unfortunately, some will unwittingly spread it to others who will get sick and die.
Many people witnessing this Memorial Day “reopening of America” are angrily shaking their heads in disgust. “Don’t they care about their fellow human beings?” they might be wondering.
The simple answer is “no.” We are perhaps as selfish an America as we’ve ever been. Thanks to the sociopath in the White House and his Republican enablers, we are a deeply divided country.
As Umair Haque writes in Eudaimonia and Co.:
When I look around the world today, it strikes me that we’re living in the age of the sociopath. I don’t just mean that in the technical psychological sense of the word — a certain head of state and his goons come to mind — but first, in a deeper, truer, broader sense. Sociopathic: hostile to the idea, the notion, the purpose of society. You don’t have to look much further than America — the world’s reigning champion of sociopathy — to see all this in action.
What’s truly alarming is that in many of the states where restrictions have been lifted, and people are partying like it’s 1999, the number of coronavirus infections and deaths are still on the rise.
You do not have to be an epidemiologist to know these “congregating masses” will only help spread the virus and push back the day when we can actually get back to some semblance of normal.
You don’t have to be a scientist to know that there is no cure for human stupidity. Yet, for the good of mankind, at least the dim-witted have always had a knack of selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Maybe good old Charlie was on to something?
Photo | lasvegasnightclubs.com