The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light that some people seem to behave more like lemmings hell-bent on running over the cliff than rational human beings.
No amount of warnings about social distancing, face coverings and washing or sanitising hands seems to persuade millions of people that we have a deadly pandemic in our midst and failure to take these elementary precautions will simply perpetuate this plague until scientists rescue us with a vaccine.
Then we’ll be all right, wont we? We can go back to our old ‘normal’ ways and woe betides anyone who prevents me from doing just as I want.
I’ve commented before on the human condition, and it’s actually not a pretty sight.
Through the power of the internet and DSTV, we can now see in great detail how the other half live and its quite mind boggling!
The population of that bastion of the free world, the USA have many millions who reason that wearing a mask and practicing social distancing is somehow an affront to their civil liberties and that no one is going to tell them what to do and when to do it.
I wonder what part of 165 000 plus deaths they don’t understand? I’ll bet that the grieving relatives of those 165 000 souls are not amongst them…
Surely they can’t all be stupid or believers in conspiracy theories, which could be akin to ignorance?
It seems that a large number of Americans are susceptible to conspiracy theories and that they show it by voting in a particular way. Stoking this characteristic has put a lot of dubious individuals in the White House, not least the present incumbent whose utterances have given birth to a new phrase – “fact checking” – true or false, but should it make a difference? Not it seems if you are part of his ‘base’.
The intrinsic difference between ignorance and stupidity is that ignorance simply implies a lack of awareness about something, while stupidity denotes the inability of a person to understand something due to insufficient intelligence, thus leading to a misinterpretation of the fact.
Clearly the difference is in the eye of the beholder and one must be careful who one calls stupid if one values ones health!
The other element is surely logic which can be measured. It does seem illogical that one would deliberately touch a hot surface, knowing that you are going to get burned, even though the hot surface can keep you warm in the winter.
No, in the USA it’s not so simple as stupidity versus ignorance, it’s all to do with politics and if you’re not for us, you’re against us – a serious polarisation brought about by some nifty manipulation. It still defies logic though.
On the other side of the pond, a recent poll indicated that 16% of the UK population would refuse to have an inoculation against Covid-19, also had me scratching my head. And this didn’t include another group labelled ‘antivaxers’. Perhaps they should be relocated to the Isles of Silly (!) an archipelago, 40 km off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, to protect the majority who do vaccinate, and perhaps they then might just die out?
No, that won’t work either as they will demand their NHS bed, free medication and care – it’s their right, right?
So it’s their right to get sick, infect others and then demand that the State must make them better, so long as it’s not by an injection!
Eish.
