The Difference Between Social Distancing and Stupidity

One can save your life and everyone you know and the other tempts fate. We know how that game ends.

Perhaps this is a heretofore unrecognized side effect of the virus that I am happy to alert the scientific community to, but I have noticed a severe uptick in idiocy across the country. Most notably, it seems to affect people’s ability to define some simple terms. It’s almost as if they can’t read the dictionary anymore. Is that a physical thing or a fear reaction? Anyone know? Let me explain what I mean.

In my state, California, we are under a state-wide order to shelter in place. My city did it first, the whole San Francisco Bay Area beating Gavin Newsom to the punch by several days. I’ll never forget it.

I was Skyping with my friend Angela who lives in Marin, and this emergency notification came across my screen. It was one of those “Where were you when the Beatles released the White Album?” moments. Oh, wrong cultural reference? Right. Most of you weren’t even born back then.

So maybe one of Kanye’s stupid fashion shows. Pick your moment. You’ll never forget it.

Angela got the message at the same time, of course. Marin counts as part of the greater Bay Area, even if they are a little pretentious even for uber-pretentious San Francisco. But whatever.

We looked at each other across the airwaves and said, “What the fuck?”

We’d been talking about hair coloring. She had an appointment with her guy in the city and asked if I was free to get together for coffee. I said I still had some owies from my shingles, and wearing outer garments (meaning anything other than going commando in my apartment) was a tad uncomfortable. Though, truth be told, I’d undergo many discomforts for a coffee date with Angela. I knew the laughs alone would be healing.

Angela said, “What does it mean, shelter in place?” My friend is nothing if not whipsmart, so I knew it was a rhetorical question.

Next, she said, “Can I go to the grocery store? I don’t have any food.”

We hadn’t read the order yet and only knew it would take place at midnight, eight hours away.

Well, so much for our coffee date. She ended the call and flew out the door in search of provisions.

Perhaps we were lucky. As early adopters of social distancing, we weren’t hampered by the side effects of rampant stupidity that seems catching just by waking up in the morning.

How else do you explain so many people with equal opportunity access to the federal order to social distance, meaning people must keep six feet apart and limit gatherings to ten people or less? Much more lenient than my home state that requires us to stay in our bloody boring dwellings until we’re starving for a crust of bread or a piece of toilet paper and must absolutely leave our homes in search of these life-saving essentials.

Even I, at eighty years old, which many of you believe is an age that requires you to give up your brain in exchange for your Medicare card, could figure out what the docs meant when they said the elderly were at risk for complications of the virus. I didn’t need to rush to my trusty dictionary to look up complications to understand that if I caught the virus it would probably be curtains for me.

Some things I don’t need spelled out in big letters.

Immediately, my inbox was flooded with messages from friends in my apartment building offering to shop for me and make sure I had what I needed.

So I locked my door and dared the virus to cross my threshold. If you count the two weeks of isolation because of shingles, I’ve been self-quarantined for going on five weeks now.

I know what isolation means. And social distancing. I can eyeball six feet.

So if a little old lady who’s in danger of forgetting how to use her cane because she doesn’t need it while she’s on lockdown in her apartment can figure it out — what the hell is wrong with all those people rocking it out on the beaches and parks and hiking trails and grocery stores as if a fucking virus wasn’t salivating for its next victim like a slimy monster in a Grade B movie from the 50s you wouldn’t even watch if you’d finished watching everything on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime and was reduced to talking to your spouse?

Granted, we live in a time when it’s politically incorrect to believe in science. But I thought that was just posturing so their neighbors wouldn’t call them out on Fox News.

Surely, they’d change their tune when it meant they could get sick and die, or they could lose their loved ones. But I would be wrong to think that. Because all across the country, even in my so-called enlightened city and state, idiocy reigns.

Men, women, children, governors of some states congregate in groups larger than ten. They sit in the park with their arms around each other like it was the olden days. They say the virus doesn’t live in hot weather, so they brag about their tropical states, except for Louisiana, parts of Florida, and the like. As though the virus is selective and only stays away from some hot spots in their tropical state. Heard this from a resident of one of those states the other day, so true story.

The reason I think idiocy is a side effect of the virus is because the person telling me this was very smart in the before time. I listened to her say she and her husband were isolating themselves, and I was glad.

Until she told me that she was also having neighbors over for dinner because they were lonely by themselves.

That’s when it hit me that we were dealing with more than just a deadly virus. All across this nation, people were acting stupid when you’d think they’d know better. Ignoring federal guidelines to stay home. Scoffing at medical reports that prove the virus exists and is not a hoax to keep a certain person already afflicted with stupidity in office.

Scorning advice by medical professionals to avoid contact with anyone outside household members. Disbelieving reports with graphs, scientific studies, and pie charts that show social distancing slows and even stops the spread of the virus, while smooching and bro-hugging every lunkhead in your contact file puts you on a fast track to the local boneyard.

I’m no brain surgeon.

But even I knew what was up. A raging, out of control epidemic of lunacy.

Time for a PSA from your friendly shut-in.

I’ll start with the meaning of social distancing.

Social means humans gathering together in groups of two or more. Dogs and cats don’t get the virus. They can do whatever they want. Cats do anyway.

Distancing means staying apart.

Social distancing, therefore, is groups of two or more humans staying apart from one another. Recommended: six feet. The size of an average man. Whoever that is.

Shelter in place means you stay in your f**king house unless you need something essential like toilet paper or vodka.

Self-quarantine means you stay in your f**king house and away from other occupants if you think you might be contagious. Good luck getting toilet paper and vodka from the lunkheads you live with.

Isolation means you probably are at high risk for a trip to the boneyard if you get the virus, so stay in your f**king house, but all by yourself.

You can’t afford to touch anything that’s been touched by people out in the world where the virus is just doing its thing looking for a juicy pair of lungs in which to set up house and then tear it apart down to the studs.

Play the pity card and get people to deliver toilet paper and vodka outside your door. Wave from your window, watch lots of cat videos, and if you use Zoom, don’t take your computer into the bathroom and close the bathroom door because virus idiocy means nobody knows how to mute and unmute without giving away the farm. If you get my drift.

This is personal with me. I have beloveds out in the world and I don’t want them to catch the virus from people suffering from idiocy. People who would put them in harms way for who knows what reason. People who will only wake up when the virus kills people they know. As if they don’t have empathy or a tiny bit of foresight to see what’s happening around the globe and say, holy (insert any swear word that gives you comfort), this could happen to me.

As if they don’t know how to follow rules because they think they are some how more special or have more rights than the people in China who got their country back to normal with rigid controls.

Yeah, well, your rights end where my life and those of my loved ones are in peril.

So my last word, my friends, said from my heart for your well-being as well as mine, stay the f**k home. See, all spelled out for you. Even people infected with idiocy can understand that.

Because staying home saves lives.

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