Hey protester, no mask? Go play in the NFL without a helmet

People are stupid.

Case in point: a CNN article headlined “Face masks have become America's new fault line.”

Here’s the stupid part: Many of the people who want to go out in public are the ones refusing to wear the masks. I find this downright mystifying. There’s no argument that coronavirus is dangerous, and that you can catch it through the air. So why would people who want to go out more often be the same ones who not wearing masks?

For a long time, the CDC was, inexplicably, telling people not to wear masks — even though this was standard operating procedure during the Spanish flu of 1918, and it’s just common sense that a barrier would lower the risk of contracting it.

The CDC finally changed this “guidance” to encourage masks April 3, more than a month after the crisis came to light. Better late than never, I suppose, except for the thousands who became infected during that month. Maybe the CDC got tired of hearing people like me wonder why moms everywhere tell their kids to cover their mouths when they cough, but the CDC somehow didn’t believe a barrier would be effective.

Bizarre.

Even more bizarre, however, is the fact that those who want to loosen stay-at-home restrictions are the same ones flouting the CDC’s current, rational device by refusing to wear face masks.

Has the COVID-19 mess cost you money, maybe even your job? I get why you’re upset. Sick of staying at home all the time? Stir crazy? I get that, too.

But if you do go out, why the hell don’t you wear a mask? Refusing to wear a mask isn’t a protest. It’s just plain stupid.

And reckless. Why not go walking around naked while you’re at it. Makes just as much sense in times like these.

Imagine if the NFL decided to protest a governor’s orders not to play football games by telling its players to suit up anyway. “But, oh yeah, don’t wear a helmet. We’re going to play without ’em to protest the government trying to tell us what to do. What’s that? You’re afraid you might get a concussion? Too bad. Suck it up.”

Except there’s a difference: Concussions aren’t contagious.

Protest, but wear a mask

If I wanted to defy the government and go out on some nonessential errand, that’s precisely when I would wear a mask. The mask has nothing to do with some government edict. It has everything to do with not getting sick.

It wouldn’t be the government infecting me if I caught COVID-19. It would be the stinkin’ virus. And that virus wouldn’t give even half a damn whether I was protesting or not.

Protester: “I’ll show the government!”

Virus: “I’ll show that protester! Hehehehe!”

Some people resent being told what to do. I get that, too. But rebelling against arbitrary authority is one thing; rebelling against common sense is another. If the government is telling you to do something that actually makes sense, defiance is not only pointless, it’s (I’ll use that word again) stupid. The NFL does, in fact, insist that players wear helmets. But you don’t see players trying to take the field without them just because they don’t like being told what to do.

That’s childish. And stupid.

If you’re stupid enough to let yourself get infected while engaging in one of these protests, that’s on you. No sympathy here, dude. Problem is, you might infect someone else, and that’s not just stupid, it’s gross negligence.

In fact, people like you are part of the reason I’d be wearing a mask in public, whether or not the government required it.

If you can’t comprehend that I’d be protecting myself, just look at it as a form of protest.

A protest against your stupidity.

This guy’s not stupid. He just had his helmet knocked off. Protesters wearing masks don’t have that excuse. They’re not going to get a concussion, but are they brain damaged?

Coronavirus coverage: Fake TV smiles just make things worse

The fake smile. It’s painful enough when someone’s trying to sell you something, but it’s downright rude when it’s offered during a time of crisis, frustration or grief.

I first noticed this phenomenon on the local news maybe 30 years ago. We were about to go through our 20th day of 100-degree temperatures in a month (or something like that). Everyone was miserable. Yet there was Mr. Smiley Weather Dude, acting like he’d just won a million bucks in the lottery. I turned the TV off.

I haven’t watched the local news in decades, mainly because I got tired of shallow, smirking heads delivering news of car crashes, apartment fires and government scandals between tasteless smiles and vapid banter.

Oh, the incongruity!

They might as well start singing, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

No one likes bad news, but when it comes from smiling, laughing messengers, it’s that much harder to take. It gives the impression that, “You poor saps have to go through this, but we don’t care. We’re just fine here!”

It’s like a punch to the gut. Rubbing salt in the wound. Adding insult to injury. Pick your well-worn cliché. Maybe you should take fiddling lessons so you can practice in case Rome burns again, Smiley Anchor.

Default-happy seems to be demeanor of choice for TV journalists delivering the news. And others, too. Videos show flight attendants with plastered-on smiles demonstrating how to evacuate a jumbo jet in the event of a crash: as though it would be some big party. Commercials for the latest obscenely priced designer medication show carefree families frocking in the park; meanwhile, in the background, an announcer calmly ticks off potential side effects: “May cause irritable bowel, sweating, constipation, fever, heartburn, psychosomatic anxiety, brain hemorrhage, alien abduction or, in extreme cases, even death.”

(The very idea of drugs companies paying millions to advertise already-overpriced drugs to people who can’t afford them sickens me. But that’s another story.)

At least pretend to care

This brings us to the coronavirus tragedy. And yes, it’s not just a “crisis,” it’s a tragedy. People are angry. They’re angry about being put out of work. They’re angry about being stuck at home. And they’re scared about not being able to pay their bills or that they — or their loved ones — might contract the disease. And they’re hurting because people they know are stuck in a COVID-19 quarantine. Or dead.

Yes, safety measures are necessary, but telling us we have to stay away from our loved ones or stay home from work with a smile on your face makes it seem like you don’t give a rat’s ass. You might say we’re “all in this together,” but if you still have a job and you haven’t been infected that comes off as disingenuous and cruel. Especially if you don’t wipe that insipid smile off your face. At least try to pretend you care.

If you’re a journalist, it’s easy to numb yourself to the tragedies you’re reporting. And if you’re a government official, you probably have no clue what people outside of Washington or City Hall are going through. You’re more concerned with your own re-election than anything else. Oh, it’s not entirely your fault: You’re conditioned that way. Still, if you’re in politics, you probably have such a big ego there’s not much room in that self-centered brain of yours to care about “the little people” you were elected to serve.

But at least for a moment, pretend you care more about people than votes or Nielsen ratings. Pretend you understand what it might be like to be bored to death, stuck at home, with nothing to think about but the mounting bills you can’t pay or the possibility that you might get sick at Walmart. Think about that for a minute and wipe that automated, teeth-whitened smile off your face just long enough to think about the ramifications of that bad news you’re delivering.

People are dying. People are out of work. People are suffering. If you realize the implications of that and you’re still smiling, there’s something very, very wrong with you.

Coronavirus rant from a Grumpy old introvert

Excuse me while I channel my inner grumpy old man:

I won’t “self-quarantine,” but I will be staying in. Thank you for asking. Before you jump down my throat, it means the same thing, smart guy.

As an author and freelance editor, I’m fortunate enough to work from home, so I don’t need a lecture about “social distancing.” I’m also an introvert, so I stay the hell away from people as it is. That means the same thing, too, genius.

Frankly, it’s absurd most of us still work in offices, anyway. We spend hours in traffic, polluting the air, just so we can spend hours in meetings, numbing our minds. Brilliant, that. (I’m not talking about people in service industries, who are, unfortunately, in a really bad situation because of all this. That should be obvious.)

After hearing how the air and water are getting cleaner since this Coronavirus hit, it makes me wonder if Mother Earth isn’t using it to cleanse the old palette. Less pollution is a good thing. We should have figured that out before we got smashed over the head with a damned infectious disease.

No, I don’t need your criticism. I wash my hands in warm water a bunch of times a day, and I wear a face mask when I go out. Don’t get on my case for depriving health workers of a mask, either. My wife bought a few to do yard work months ago, so no, we’re not being “insensitive” about that. Thanks for caring.

I’m not “flattening the curve,” I just don’t wanna get sick. Or make you sick, either. That’s why I stay away from B.S. media buzzwords like the ones I’ve put in quotes: They make me want to wretch. Speak plainly, or STFU.

I’ll stay home, but spare me your artificially euphemistic PR-speak about “sheltering in place.” The very use of “sheltering” as an intransitive verb is a buzz kill for me.

Yes, I want information about the virus. But I want details, and lots of them, not rah-rah slogans and sound bites. Not shaming and peer pressure.

Don’t worry: I won’t be getting within 6 feet of you, but I probably wouldn’t have, anyway, because I actually value my personal space. Imagine that. I won’t be coughing in your face, but I wouldn’t have done that anyway, either, because it’s rude as hell. Common courtesy not to, y’know? Maybe this virus has spread so fast because we forgot about that. A shame, really.

So now people are communicating even more on social media, where they’re blasting each other left and right over how they’ve responded to this thing. I heard recently that most of what people post on social media is criticism. That seems accurate enough. And the more you insult each other, the more social distance you’ll get, so I guess that works. Except you won’t get the corona kind of virus online: You won’t cough, but you might get hacked. 

People online either get pissed at you for wanting to stay healthy. So you can survive. Or they get pissed at you for wanting to go to work. So you’ll get paid. So you can survive. Tough choice.

Is social media shaming really what people need when they’re going through something like this? I kinda doubt it, but that’s what they’ll get … which makes me glad I’ve distanced myself from all that toxic middle-finger-pointing. I need it like I need a case of Covid-19.

And please don’t tell me we’re all “in this together.” We’re not. The people who are getting sick and losing their jobs are in it one helluva lot deeper than NBA players chillin’ at home or members of Congress with those free health care plans they’re denying the rest of us.

That kind of inequity is what had grumpy old introverts like me keeping our distance from society in the first pace. I didn’t need a pandemic to tell me people are dangerous. All I had to do was look at the way we polluted the planet long before this thing started. And the way we treat each other: like objects, marks and scapegoats.

So keep your P.C. rhetoric about social distancing to yourself. We cynics and introverts invented the concept.

We just put it differently: Get out of my face, and stay the hell off my lawn.

Coronavirus humor: The good, the bad and the sarcastic

Everyone’s up in arms over the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19 (its droid name). But if you can’t beat it, make fun of it. So, here’s the good news and the bad news about the panic and pandemic that’s sweeping the nation Gangnam Style, faster than Beanie Babies amped up on caffeine and My Little Pony if her name was Secretariat.

Beer (burp)

• The good news: Corona Extra beer won’t give you coronavirus.

• The bad news: Corona Extra won’t give you any extra protection from it, either – unless you get drunk at home, pass out and don’t go out. Well, I guess that’s one way to self-quarantine.

• More bad news: You won’t be able to get that Corona Extra as easily, because they’re closing down the bars. What’s Norm Peterson gonna do?

• The good news: This means fewer drunk drivers on the road and fewer bad pickup lines. It means fewer alcoholics falling off the wagon. It also means fewer people doing screechy, off-key karaoke renditions of Love Shack, Unchained Melody and Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Except in the shower, where they’ll (hopefully) be washing all those icky germs off themselves.

• The bad news: Our lives will be a lot more Closing Time and a lot less One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.

Social (antisocial!)

• The bad news: We’re stuck with another artificial, overused buzz phrase: “social distancing.”

• The worse news: It doesn’t apply to social media. So now, people will spend more time yelling at each other about politics, blocking each other and spreading conspiracy theories about coronavirus because they’re stuck in the house with nothing better to do.

• The good news: Did you hear? They’re working on a vaccine for the coronavirus!

• The bad news: The antivaxxers will refuse to take it and spread the word on social media while they’re “social distancing.” So more people will get sick, anyway.

• The good news: We’ve got more polite way to tell salesmen, religious doorbell-ringers and garden-variety SOBs to fuck off.

• The bad news: It’s a lot more satisfying to just tell them to fuck off.

School’s out (completely)

• The good news: Kids have to be loving the fact that they don’t have to go to school. Thanks to the coronavirus and the reactions/overreactions of elected officials, school’s out completely (to quote Alice Cooper).

• The bad news: They won’t actually learn anything, in which case they may not graduate and won’t go to college.

• The good news: They won’t take out student loans and be saddled with a lifetime of debt.

• The good news: Kids are less susceptible to the effects of coronavirus, which means future generations are safe, bless their little hearts.

• The bad news: This includes middle-school students, who should probably spend three years in quarantine anyway for their own safety — and everyone else’s.

Play ball (not)

• The bad news: They canceled spring training.

• The good news: The Astros won’t be playing.

• The bad news: They canceled the NCAA Tournament.

• The good news (for Vince McMahon): The XFL might get more people to watch, except ...

• The bad news (also for Vince McMahon): They canceled that, too.

• The worse news: The Summer Olympics are coming up. (Forgot about that, didn’t you?). They only come along once every four years, so if they’re canceled, it will be a long wait for the next swimming, 100-meter dash and badminton gold medals. Yes, badminton really is a team sport. No, American football is not. Sorry, XFL castaways.

Endangered species (nonhuman variety)

• The bad news: It’s a “pandemic.”

• The good news: That doesn’t pandas are dying, just people. This is actually really good news, because there are only about 1,500 giant pandas living in the wild, and more people than that have already died from the coronavirus.

It’s the economy (stupid)

• The good news: Maybe dinosaur corporations will finally figure out the advantages of telecommuting and the tedium of worthless meetings.

• The bad news: No, they probably won’t.

• The bad news: The stock market’s down.

• The good news: All those rich one-percenter corporate thieves are seeing their unearned profits go down the toilet.

• The bad news: They’ll pass the pain on to the rest of us and keep living the high life, anyway. Coronavirus trickles down a lot faster than those profits, which never seen to go viral, do they?

• The good news: We don’t have to attend dinner parties thrown by people we don’t like and have nothing in common with, and pretend to like them just so we can drum up business.

• The bad news: We won’t be drumming up business. We won’t be drumming up anything. We’ll be like Led Zeppelin after John Bonham died. No drums. Nada.

Politics (estranged bedfellows)

• The good news: Cable news is covering something other than impeachment, election news and politicians being politicians.

• The bad news: We’ll get sick of 24-7 coronavirus coverage just as quickly. (Yes, I wrote “get sick of it” on purpose.)

• The bad news: We’ll be getting more medical bills.

• The worse news: We don’t have universal health care, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting it anytime soon.

• The good news: Because they can’t afford it, sick people will be staying home instead of going to the hospital and infecting others. Isn’t that a form of social distancing?

• The bad news: They may wind up dead because they’re not getting treated.

• The worse news: Politicians don’t care enough to do anything about it.

• The rule: Candidates want you to avoid large crowds.

• The exception: Except, of course, at polling places on Election Day … but only if you’re voting for them. Your health is sooooo important to them, unless it interferes with their political prospects!

Literary (and scary)

• The good news: Since this is a novel coronavirus, you won’t get it from reading nonfiction.

• The better news: Actually, you won’t get it from reading novels, either.

• The best news: You’ll have a lot more time to read, now that you don’t have anything else to do ...

• The bad news: A lot of you will binge-watch The Walking Dead instead, which means you won’t be reading my wife’s exciting Mad World trilogy about zombie apocalypse that’s triggered by (you guessed it) a pandemic.

• The good news: That pandemic involves a strain of the black plague and is a whole lot worse than what’s happening with the coronavirus.

• The bad news: Coronavirus ain’t fictional. In fact, it’s a big enough pain that it could drive you to drink. Hey, man, pass the Corona! Cheers! Did I just say “hey, man”? I’m starting to sound like Joe Biden. I think I need something stronger!