Quarantine, take 2!

Just when we thought we were well on our way to returning to normal, the number of COVID-19 infections has skyrocketed into oblivion. Around here, our governor has sent us back into quarantine, complete with the requirement to stay home and only leave to take care of essential business. Once things started to reopen, I had a feeling that this would be the result. For reasons only known to them, so many people have not taken this crisis seriously. They act like their rights have been taken away. (I wrote a bit about this in my last post.)

How do we get people to get over themselves and do the right thing? No one alive today would remember the flu pandemic just after World War I. My guess is that people at that time did whatever they had to do in order to protect themselves and others. But these are different times. Many people don't have the sense of doing what's best for everyone as a whole. "Me first!", they seem to think.

Within the last week, I posted a Facebook update where I suggested that not taking precautions would result in more infections. One (now former) friend responded to my post and said that she proudly does not wear a mask. Pretty dumb and irresponsible when you have a six-month-old child. She got an earful from some of my friends, so she deleted her post, which also took down all of the responses. Then she unfriended me.

Everyone has their own opinion, and they're entitled to that. But this situation requires that we follow the lead of the doctors and scientists who are as on top of this as they can be. This pan-dumb-ic is certainly frustrating and inconvenient. But it's here and we need to deal with it. So why not do things right? A little patience will cut down on the number of patients.

NOTE: I said "pan-dumb-ic" simply because we're all frustrated and can't do much. Just me messing around with the words as usual.