Shrugging in the face of death?

Coming up on week 3 of the lockdown here in California. Well, “lockdown” isn’t the right word, since again we’re not really seeing any enforced travel restrictions as of yet. And honestly because of that, there have been enough people taking advantage of leniency to cause many local closures of parks, beaches and hiking paths since group outings are still occurring with alarming frequency and distinct lack of social distancing.

Trevor Noah on The Daily Show (now live from his apartment, as the virus shuts down professional studios and makes YouTubers of us all) asked if this sort of blase attitude would still be happening if COVID-19 were zombies rather than an invisible virus that sometimes doesn’t even cause symptoms in those carrying it — and I suppose my answer to that would be: maybe? I mean we’re now seeing reports and even pictures out of NYC that should be downright terrifying but don’t seem to be moving the needle much for the average person who is just annoyed that the supermarket still has no toilet paper.

We’re living in an age where people seem to feel like they can choose whatever reality they like to believe in. Mass graves in Iran? Fake. A C-19 death in the Big Apple every ten minutes? Overblown hogwash. The attitude seems to be: if I don’t see personal evidence of it, then it’s not happening, or at least not happening on the scale I’m being told. It certainly can’t happen “here” (wherever “here” might be).

The worst part is that there actually are fake reports out there muddying the waters. So *can* you trust what you read? Or even what you see? But this is absolutely a global-scale pandemic, and people absolutely are dying and many more are getting sick.

But yet, in the absence of a statewide order some beaches in Florida are still open and crowded. Time will tell if that was the smart thing to do. My gut and everything I’ve been studying over the past few weeks says it’s not.

Trevor Noah seemed to think having a physical, tangible threat would make a difference… but maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all that even in a worldwide zombie apocalypse people wouldn’t be taking things seriously until the crisis literally shambled up and bit them.