The Deniers and the Apathetic
Today I gave blood, braving the viral jungle. Since I couldn’t book an appointment anywhere within Portland for weeks or months, I booked one in a smaller town several miles south of Portland (I won’t mention the name, but it rhymes with Filsonville).
The blood donation went smoothly and all the Red Cross people were masked up, armed with sanitizers till Hell wouldn’t have it, and all very nice. So I’m very thankful to the Red Cross and all their volunteers! Since I was already out and about, I thought I would do some needed grocery shopping in this small town, and chose a large chain grocery store nearby.
There were some signs posted about social distancing, and every aisle in the store had clear “One Way” signs with arrows, to prevent awkward head-to-head anti-distancing encounters in the middle of the aisle. But apart from that and about 4 other face masked people in the whole store (besides me), you would never know we were smack in the middle of the worst pandemic in modern human history. The remaining 140 people in the store had no masks. People weren’t distancing from me or others around them, despite my visibly trying to get away from them when they got too close. I saw a group of about six 50+ year old gentlemen (whom I feel safe in assuming did not live together), just standing in the middle of the produce section shooting the shit. No masks or any kind of PPE. They each could have elbowed the guys next to them without even leaning.
But it didn’t stop there. As a made my way thru the one-way aisles, more than once I had someone coming at me (the wrong way), with no intention of stopping, slowing, or changing direction to allow social distancing from me, so my only options were to (a) allow them to pass within a couple feet of me or (b) turn around and also go the wrong way, ahead of them, but at least maintain my distance. I chose (b). There are numerous other examples of shitheadery and buffoonery, but I’ll stop there.
All of this leads me to wonder…why? Why would people who don’t appear to be clinically insane put themselves and others at so much risk unnecessarily? I can only come up with two possible answers. One is simple denial. They don’t believe this pandemic is actually happening. If they are correct, then the media has just pulled off the hugest hoax in recorded history, for which I commend them. The other is that maybe they do believe in the pandemic to an extent…but a disease that is killing hundreds of thousands of people and appears to be one of the most transmissible viruses we’ve ever seen still doesn’t justify any effort, somehow.
Whether it’s either answer, or a combination of the two, it is becoming clearer to me just how screwed we really are as a city, state, and country. Social distancing does work, but it won’t work for US because we simply aren’t doing it. All of this has added to my reluctance to leave my little bubble here.
Bike Newbie 