by Minna & Jim
What the pandemic has cost teenagers. – I hate seeing this fright headline, for what it has cost the teenagers is infection and either death or long term disability. That’s what the pandemic has cost the teenager by staying home, by not having school. And the fragility of life, the reality of the world not being here just for their enjoyment. The rest of the talk is just blather and very well may have been written by a college student who had not yet graduated from English 101, and the people who don’t wear their masks because it isn’t right, they’ll never die, people who have no idea of social responsibility because living is all about them and their enjoyment. It would be nice if all could have a near death experience. It would turn their heads around. Just because they’re young and vibrant, doesn’t mean they can’t die; it doesn’t mean life is here just for them, goddammit! So, really, the pandemic hasn’t cost the teenager shit.
Instead of bitching about it, try thinking of ways to make the time productive and they should stop relying on their fear-ridden mamas and papas and news reporters. Try beginning with: you’re not wearing the mask because of you, you’re wearing it to protect you from others, especially from others who don’t wear their masks. And look what happened in the 1918-19 flu: 70,000,000 dead in 1918. (I wonder how my grandparents made it through. Because they didn’t know of isolation, they didn’t know of masks.) Today, that same flu costs us over 160,000 deaths a year. Viruses seem to hang around.
Well, readers of the newspapers, readers who only see the damage, that is; whiners sell papers and get into people’s minds to the point that they’ll question fucking science and rationality. What has science done for you? You couldn’t dress yourself or carry on without out it, or see. But we’re so prone to blame China for “you name it” there’s no ability to see otherwise, that is, to see the truth. (Kansas was the cause of the 1918 flu.)
This dip into history is probably tiresome. I apologize.
I have a friend who, when she heard of the Corona virus (in the beginning), was excited, for she thought it was a virus that attacked a man’s penis. She thought this was great as there are so many male assholes it might make it easier to find a good one. She was terribly upset to find this was not so.