The Big Stupid Elephant in the Room

The Federal Department of Education is investigating states which are prohibiting mask mandates in schools on the grounds that this may be endangering disabled schoolchildren.

I'm glad the Biden administration is doing something. The problem is that anti-mask measures are an attack on all children, and all adults, and science, and sanity, etc. 

We (by "we" I mean the non-stupid majority) have been much too nice about this. 

There's a time and place to be considerate of idiots' feelings. This is not the time and place. When a house is on fire, and a maniac is pouring gasoline on the fire and raving about how this is the correct way to put out fires, we don't stand off to one side and try to reason with the maniac, being careful not to insult him. For some time now, the deadliest enemy in the US, the one killing the most people, is no longer COVID. It's human stupidity. It's yahoos refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated or let their kids wear masks or get vaccinated, and comparing masks and vaccines to Nazism, trying their damnedest to make it impossible for any of us to have any masked, vaccinated place we can go. 

It's idiots. It's morons. It's stupidity.

Since long before COVID appeared, since long before Trump ran for Persidunt, I've maintained that mankind's deadliest enemy is human stupidity. First Trump, and now COVID have made this point increasingly clear.

And yet, we refuse to say it. For fear of hurting stupid people's feelings, we are greatly endangering their lives by coming right out and saying that they are stupid. For the sake of political correctness and misplaced librul over-sensitivity, we are greatly hindering our own efforts to end a plague.

If ever there were a perfect example of the uselessness of political correctness, we are living in it now. And dying for the sake of it.

Things actually could be worse. They have been worse. During the flu epidemic in 1918 and 1919, public officials thought it was a good idea not to let the public know there was an epidemic. We learned from that disaster that it's better to talk openly and publicly about disasters.

We partly learned it. Hopefully we're still learning. We've got a long way to go.

Coronavirus and the Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919

About 100 years ago, there was a worldwide flu pandemic which killed between 17 and 100 million people. The latest statistics I've seen for the coronavirus say that deaths are still under 1/4 of a million. After killing millions of people, influenza a century ago quickly mutated into a much less deadly strain. It wasn't until decades later that a flu vaccine was developed. And maybe someday, we'll be able to convince people to actually take the flue vaccine.

I've been thinking about the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, because it seems to me that the flu back then was about as contagious and deadly as coronavirus, and that the difference in casualties between the pandemic back then and the current one has a lot to do with the helpful, simple advice which science has given us to deal with coronavirus: stay away from other people. Don't touch your face. Wash your hands regularly.

By contrast, governments around the world censored information about the flu pandemic. They tried to keep people from finding out that there was an epidemic at all. And they did such a thorough job of that, that to to this day, many people have still never heard of the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, and we still don't know whether it killed 17 million or 100 million people.

It may seem very cruel, in the midst of all the current suffering, for me to say that things have been much worst in the past. But they have, and humanity survived, and what I'm trying to do here is not to be cruel but to give people hope. For all of the sheer stupidity leading to illness and death at the current time, a century ago, a comparable outbreak of illness was handled much worse still, and we survived, and we learned, and we developed vaccines and worldwide institutions to anticipate and react intelligently to epidemics. Yes, clearly, many people are reacting stupidly to coronavirus, and it's getting people killed. Still, it's not as bad as the flu pandemic a century ago, and the main reason why is because, overall, we're reacting and behaving much better, much more intelligently and effectively. We're putting into effect what we've learned from earlier epidemics.

And as horrible as the news is now, day after day, I firmly believe that we will survive this, and that we will come out of this smarter and wiser than we were. That's how I see things, looking through the perspective of centuries.

Now, back to the daily horror: how do we get through to the people, from governors in some states to protesters in other states -- and for once the news from the US is so horrible that, frankly, I don't even know much about how things are being handled in other countries. I'm overwhelmed by the domestic news -- how do we get through to these people, and get them to follow the very simple procedures, distance, masks, washing hands, which work so well?

I don't know.

All I can think of to do is to urge everyone who reads this to think about what we can do to get through to those people, before it's a matter of horrible, obvious statistics showing in hindsight that they were wrong. We need persuasiveness so urgently right now. I feel my lack of persuasiveness so intensely.

But I can't give up. I have to urge all of you not to give up. Try to change people's minds, to save lives.