The 2020 pandemic exposed human stupidity like no other event in history

 

I have been reading Robert Harris’s gripping new novel V2 the last two days and have been out of the covid picture but when I glimpsed at the covid-19 data for Serbia I got a shock: +5,613 new cases in one day for a population of 8.7 million!  So I call a friend in Belgrade to find out what happened and got an explanation that people just let their guard down and have had huge parties on boats on the Sava river. There were  no fines for not wearing masks. They don’t trust the government, he said.

If you don't trust the government, just do the research yourself - read what epidemiologists say* and not what politicians or economists or journalists say!  I just cannot believe that people cannot take things seriously when their lives are at stake! But apparently they don’t.

The numbers are skyrocketing throughout Europe and the situation in the US is horrible, so it is not just Balkan disregard for authority – it is pure stupidity almost throughout the world. After all, Trump most probably lost his presidency because he downplayed the dangers of covid-19 and refused to wear the mask.

 It seems that people are incapable of understanding elementary facts about the pandemic – that it spreads via aerosol i.e. and that being in closed premises without a mask is the most dangerous, that masks although not offering full protection are helpful and reduce the risk and should be worn, that one should just not take risks because of pandemic fatigue since this all is just for a limited time period.  Pfizer and Moderna will start distributing the vaccine in December 2020, so this is just a question of another 3-4 months, we are ¾ there!

I do not know what historians of the future will say about the pandemic of 2020. I am sure that they will have to mention that the 2020 pandemic exposed human stupidity like no other event in history.  

 

* Marc Lipsitch

  Michael Osterholm

  Celine Gounder