Contrarians in the COVID-19 Era

In the first few days of the coronavirus pandemic, I worried about my health. I was middle aged, overweight, diabetic, and running around the country ringing doorbells, talking to people. I read the statistics and found a person in my predicament would have roughly a 9% chance of dying if I contracted the virus. Eventually I learned to relax about it and decided to let my fairly good immune system take it on, if necessary.

My next wave of anxiety about the disease was the number of cases. I was ridiculously relieved when the number of new cases each day started to go back down and stayed level for a couple weeks. I may have even ventured forth from my musty hideout without hand sanitizer a time or two. There were parts of the country and the world that still had rampant death and illness, but things close to home were on the mend somewhat.

Then began my third wave of worry: the contrarians of the world – mostly gun-toting Americans – had banded together to demand an end to the “tyranny” of social distancing. God himself had bestowed upon them the right to live free or die, so what government had the right to stop them? My question is, does the government have the right to stop you from killing someone? Of course it does. (Making it illegal doesn’t always work, but it’s a pretty necessary step if you ever plan to prosecute someone.) In my view, if you’re just going to go stand around waving your gun and drinking Schlitz, and that is potentially going to kill thousands of people, shouldn’t that be frowned upon? Of course it should. Unless of course you are a contrarian who knows better than all the immunologists, doctors, and scientists of every kind, and happens to know, in spite of excepted wisdom, that mingling about is harmless. And this is what God surely intended when he granted you all those freedoms. Despite some evidence you could use – you live in a trailer, you can’t even spell ‘tyranny,’ you didn’t quite make it through high school – you are smarter than everyone else! Yes, everyone else is fearful because they watch too much TV, or they think all them fancy scientist fellas are telling the truth. Ha! Not you! You have decided to buck conventional sense and go it (almost) alone, on the merits of your ability to think things through, unlike the libtards and snowflakes you see around you. Surely at this point you deserve to be rescued from the slight discomfort of your confinement, damn the dying people!

One stubborn group of contrarians that has made its presence known at some of the protests demanding the country open up again is anti-vaccine people. They still cling to the idea that vaccines are linked to autism. That argument got put to bed a while ago. What happened was this: the health community got sick of hearing about vaccines causing autism, so they handed over all their data on vaccinations and autism to the anti-vaccine people, and after examining the data the anti-vaxxers were forced to admit they couldn’t find any evidence of a link either. Get this, Contrarian Nation: the scientists were telling the truth all along. Maybe that isn’t always the case, but when the government tells you to stay home, ruining the economy and forgoing trillions in income tax, you can be pretty sure this isn’t the common flu, as was repeated on Fox News and by Rush Limbaugh, King Donald and other far right nut jobs.

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I haven’t heard it linked, but if I was looking around for flat earth believers, I’ll bet you I could find some at these protests, too.

Another startling absurdity from the far right is that they say they’d rather have people die than hurt the economy. Aren’t these, by and large, the religious people who value life so much they can’t bear to hear about an abortion? These elderly should be happy to die and save America, they say. Actually, these elderly are the generation who fought wars, paving the way for you to be born safe and prosperous, and your time to shield them from harm comes and you circulate the virus and bring death to many because you’re bored of Netflix? Very heroic.