A Reality Check for the Ignorant

The first case arrived in January. The first death was in February. Lockdown orders came in March. Soon after schools across the country shutdown and we moved online. Fast forward to today, a virus that was supposedly no deadlier than the flu has resulted in more than 38 million unemployed and 250,000 dead.

This should be a time where our community comes together against a common enemy and takes the needed sacrifices in order to protect those most vulnerable, but recently it has instead become more and more evident that many people have grown completely apathetic to the idea of helping others.

From holding anti-mask protests and throwing large parties, to refusing to wear a mask in public and neglecting social distancing, the risks some people have taken, both big and small, only demonstrate the dispassion and  ignorance of those who participate in them. 

Even the seemingly insignificant act of constantly whining about having to wear a mask is harmful. Besides being completely disrespectful to the doctors who execute minute surgery for hours on end all while wearing a mask, those complaints only contribute to fueling aversion for public health safety.

Many influential people are using their platforms to spread misinformation and fuel distrust of our medical professionals.

Certain politicians and media organizations have blatantly ignored scientists and common logic by downplaying and ignoring the grim reality of a virus that has devastated our country. They’ve encouraged people to put short-term profits ahead of human lives. This is despite the fact that we can always recover the economy, we can never recover those that unnecessarily died.

For the officials, celebrities, and anyone else who publicly preaches safety, while in private ignoring it, you are little better than those who admit to it.

Our elected officials, and to a lesser extent our celebrities, should both encourage us to listen to our medical professionals and set a high example for what to do during a pandemic.

Even more concerning than the people who disregard Covid out of ignorance are those who overlook basic science in order to fuel a baseless conspiracy which proposes that every single doctor and medical professional are lying to us about Covid and how it’s all a ‘hoax’.

Whether it be by disregarding the effects of Covid or disobeying the advice of scientists during a pandemic, the extent to which these individuals have gone to dismiss the suffering of others is extremely frightening.

While it is true that for some that are infected the virus is little more than a flu, but this doesn’t mean that these are the symptoms of everyone. For every dozen people who only get a small cough, there is a grandparent on their deathbed. For every dozen people who are asymptomatic, there is a loved one who is stuck in a ventilator and can’t see their family in-person.

People need to remember that Covid is more than just the mask-wearing and social distancing. It’s the thousands of families who are struggling to afford the basic necessities like food and water. It’s the millions of people who lost their jobs, many of whom lost their only source of income and can no longer financially support their families. It’s the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their parents, relatives, or grandparents to the virus.

I understand that for many of us Covid fatigue has set in and deep down everyone just wants a return to normalcy. We want to be able to attend sporting events, we want to go outside without the fear of spreading an infectious disease, but we need to remember that people’s lives are still at stake. 

We are living in historic times and the actions we take in these upcoming months will be written down in the history books, so decades from now the next generation will ask us what we did to help others. Will you tell them that your ignorance and selfishness got the better of you, and that you put your own short-term satisfaction ahead of the long-term health of your loved ones. Or will you be able to confidently say that you prioritized the lives of others above all else and did everything in your power to keep people safe.