A Plague of the Stupid

A man died in intensive care at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. In his 30’s, which is remarkable. But otherwise, someone dying from Covid-19 in the US isn’t news. It’s barely even a story anymore, other than a deeply personal and subjective one. What is remarkable though, are the circumstances under which this patient caught the virus…

Apparently, the patient had attended a Covid-19-party. The gist of which is that someone diagnosed throws a party, to see if anyone else gets infected. To see if the disease is a hoax or not. And supposedly, this 30-year old went to one. Caught the bug. And died in hospital care. And just moments before drawing his last breath, he’d told a nurse “I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not…” Or so retells the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital.

Seems poetic to me.

Yeah, maybe that’s harsh. Yes, I realise that this cretin’s passing is a tragedy to a mother, a father, a grandparent, a lover, a friend, a dog, a goldfish, what-so-ever the patient left behind. Their mourning is real, their sorrow tangible, their tragedy palpable. But do you know what’s just as palpable by everyone else? That dumb motherfuckers like this party-goer here is allowed to actively participate in our society. That dumb motherfuckers like this are gleefully putting other people in jeopardy. That dumb motherfuckers like this are allowed to vote.

Sure, disinformation is rampant in the US. In the whole world in fact, but the US is fucking top-ranked as far as legitimized bullshit goes. But it doesn’t take a lot of sense to seek a second opinion. It’s not a high bar to crawl across to listen to any other gods damned charlatan than Laura Ingram or Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro (and yes, there’s plenty of blame to be spread in their direction, but that’s not this column). It is not on-par to rocket-science to listen to medical professionals over pundits and demagogues on matters of an international health emergency. I am not asking for much, by international standards. But from large swathes of the US population, it seems I might as well ask for a three hundred word synopsis of Finnegan’s Wake.

No… no, I’m not making light of all the tragedy that the virus is causing. I’m not laughing at mass graves in Chile. I’m not deriding the onslaught in Swedish nursing homes. And I’m most certainly not being glib about the Expendable Essentials, the thousands of people that are being pushed by governments around the world to save the general population from distress or death meanwhile being thrown under the proverbial bus by their leaders with naught but a pat on the shoulder.

But if you’re so stupid that you can’t, for lack of imagination or intelligence or compassion, I understand not which, look and behold the state of the world and the consequences that this virus is causing and take even the slightest precautions; then you, sir, are a fucking moron. And you deserve everything that your stupidity brings upon you. The tragedy isn’t that you, sir, die in surprise, but that you’ve probably put plenty of other people at risk. People that weren’t as stupid and deserving of their fate as you were. You, in your belligerent idiocy, actively made the world a worse place to live in for a vast majority of your fellow human beings.

Now, at the back of the room, I can hear the murmur of “elitism”. That it is in poor taste to degrade people that lack, for some unutterable reason, capacity for coherent cognition. But no… shaming these woefully malinformed malcontents for their malignancy can’t possibly be considered “elitist”. It is not elitist to not actively search out a vector of a potentially deadly plague. It is not elitist to recognize demagogues like Ingraham and Pirro for who they are. It is not elitist to ask and expect of people not to make themselves a lethal nuisance to others. And even though there seem to be plenty of people that can’t clear that standard, either because they’re ill-informed or ill-educated or ill-advised or just ill-headed, it is often not an elite one to ask for.

To many across the world, this is a plague of the elderly and infirm. To some, it’s a plague even of the young and fit. And others it is a plague of those forced to deal with it on the front lines. But in some places, Covid-19 is a plague of the malignantly stupid.

/Sebastian Lindberg 14/7-2020