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I’ve always believed that if you want to know a person’s real character, give them a lot of money, power or alcohol and see how they handle it.
I now need to add one other item to that list: COVID-19, otherwise known as the coronavirus.
Because of that virus, people’s true natures are showing.
Just a quick note before we get started: I don’t worry too much about contracting COVID-19. I use common sense and I practice good hygiene. Despite what I do for a living, I’ve made it a point to minimize my contact with others as much as possible. Not to mention, with all the alcohol, tobacco and other stuff in my blood, there probably isn’t any room for COVID-19. But I digress.
Over the past two weeks and change, I’ve had the opportunity to see people at their very best. I’ve also seen examples to remind me that, when it comes to humanity as a whole, my cynicism is well-placed.
Let’s start with the good. You have folks checking up on their elderly neighbors. You’ve got employers deciding to pay their employees for their time involuntarily away from work. You’ve got customers stepping up and patronizing their local eatery establishments, even if it is a drive-thru. Teachers across Indiana are having car parades so they can see their students.
And Eli Lilly and Co., Roche and other companies are stepping up to help speed testing for COVID-19 or to manufacture badly needed equipment for hospitals, which gets us that much closer to getting things under control. Heck, even one of my favorite cigar bars is doing curbside service.
But unfortunately, for every flower in humanity’s garden, there are some weeds as well.
Who are they? Where do I begin?
For starters, they are the people who’ve been hoarding toilet paper. Most people use one to two rolls of TP each week. The way these folks are grabbing it off the shelves, you’d think they were going to be indoors until 2025. If they’re that worried, maybe they should include less fiber in their diets. But then again, these are the same people who, when they ran to the grocery stores, left anything on the shelves labeled “organic,” “gluten-free” or “natural.”
The next group that could use a whack upside the head are the idiots in Florida who all ran to the beach for spring break. You might have seen the photos on social media. Don’t worry if you missed it, because I’m sure you’ll be reading about some of them soon—probably on the obituary pages.
What is so hard about understanding that you can have the coronavirus for up to two weeks before showing symptoms, and that you can pass that along to others? If it weren’t for the fact that these idiots are a danger to the rest of society, I’d throw in a line about Darwin at work here.
But perhaps the biggest group of knuckleheads in all this has been the members of the political and chatter classes, particularly those who called the coronavirus a hoax and an effort to bring down the president. It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many chronic cases of foot-in-mouth disease. Luckily, there is a cure for that going forward: I call it thinking before speaking. Maybe they should try to social distance themselves from the rest of us for a while.
As I said, the coronavirus is like alcohol, money and power. It shows who among us are the flowers and who could use a dousing of Roundup.•
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