Still Trying To Cure Stupidity

This post was originally published on April 7. In light of the attention recently given to masks and Americans' responses to using them, we have updated it.

In his 1982 novel "The White Plague" Frank Herbert writes about a mad scientist who develops a pathogen that kills women. Men are asymptomatic carriers. His intended target is Ireland, because his wife and children were killed by an IRA bomb. But viruses don't observe borders, and the virus spreads rapidly and easily, passing through filters with ease. The result is global gendercide.

COVID-19 is far less selective. Its victims include the rich and the poor, the intelligent and the moronic, the religious and the atheistic, the royal and the commoner. It is an equal opportunity pathogen, making no distinction of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. No one is immune.

But there is one class of Americans who choose to put themselves at increased risk by willfully and deliberately ignoring the best medical advice: There is no word for such behavior other than stupid.

In a White House press briefing on April 3, the Great Pretender discussed the CDC advisory that all Americans wear face masks when around others to help stop the spread of the virus.

That was when a true leader would have pulled out a mask and put it on.

But after repeatedly assuring Americans that wearing a mask is voluntary because he doesn't want us to think the CDC has any authority, he went on to say that he would not be wearing a mask because "I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens. I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself."¹

Excuse me? There hasn't been a state visit to the White House since before COVID-19 appeared. His excuses range from silly to petty, like saying he "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it"² during a visit to a Ford plant in Michigan.

As Biden aide TJ Ducklo noted, "Presidents lead by example, and wearing a mask helps protect others, . . . Donald Trump should try it, because his failure to act early on producing [personal protective equipment], on ramping up testing, and implementing a coherent national response to this crisis has cost thousands of Americans their lives."As if the Unspeakable Unmasked cared.

Unfortunately, the Chucklehead-in-Chief's "do as I say, not as I do" attitude will no doubt be adopted by those who accept him as a role model, needlessly increasing the death toll. His followers, who seem to tend to blind allegiance, either to the GOP or to Trump, as opposed to independent thought and decision making, may well be hit the hardest.

With COVID-19 we might finally have a cure for stupidity--dare we hope it begins at the top?


---Diogenes, 4/7/20; republished 5/28/20


¹https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-briefing-transcript-april-3-new-cdc-face-mask-recommendation
²https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mocks-joe-biden-wear-face-mask-public/
³https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mocks-joe-biden-wear-face-mask-public/