In All Honesty, Does It REALLY Surprise You?

Tweet

Earlier today there was an excellent discussion here posted by @marguicha , titled, “I Am Shocked At the Stupidity of Some Human Beings.” In it, she chided a doctor in her country who had gone shopping without any protection...but with full knowledge she (the M.D.) was infected with the COVID-19 bug. After my nap i woke up to the news that country singer Joe Diffie has died from COVID-19, as has Arrows lead singer and songwriter Alan Merrill (he was the person responsible for the song that Joan Jett famously covered, “I Love Rock and Roll”). Additionally, country/rock/folk legend John Prine is reportedly in critical condition, intubated in a hospital, with the virus. Jackson Browne reported that he has the virus, but his case appears mild. These are just three names in one stinking afternoon. There are other celebrities contacting it and dying from it. Is someone’s favorite actor going to have to croak before people go, “Wow, this is real”? However...... As I was reading Marguchia’s post this morning, I thought, “In all honesty, does it REALLY surprise you?” There is a gene in humans, whether it’s a “self-destruct button” gene or “stupidity at the wrong time” gene, that seems intent on helping people kill themselves. I’ve mentioned it before, but there is a tongue-in-cheek (in a sad sort of way) website called the Darwin Awards, where they pay, ahem, “tribute” to people who die trying to prove Darwin’s “natural selection” theory was correct. (I told my brother last month that the guy who had recently died by shooting himself off in a homemade rocket to prove the earth is flat seemed to be the clear-cut winner for the 2020 award.) Also consider the fact that EVERY DAY there are an average of over 2,700 people arrested for drunk driving. That’s just in America, and just the people driving drunk who get caught. That does NOT consider the 25 per day who die or kill someone in a wreck. (And, as I said, that’s merely the U.S. statistics, NOT anything world-wide.) Plus, throw in the additional 2,800 people who die annually because of texting on the phone (either themselves or someone else’s carelessness) and the ones who die while high on meth or opioids, and you can see that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t the first time that we’ve had “a mess’a people whose elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor” (a couple of southern colloquialisms). And, with the case of the drunk driver or the texter, they aren’t always killing themselves but passing the misery on to others. It’s sad. It’s downright maddening. But, if you look at the history of our behavior, it’s not all that shocking. It seems “Here, hold my beer” is as contagious as the virus. Here’s the original article from earlier today: