How crazy people will lead the world out of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yes, I know that using the term "crazy" isn't really very nice, so you can substitute anything else you want if you prefer, like "mentally-challenged" or "delusional", or even "unrealistically optimistic". Of course you could also call some people "not playing with a full deck" or "the elevator doesn't go all of the way to the top floor". Historically these crazy people have led the way, and I believe that they will lead the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like everything else that people do, being crazy is a matter of degrees. Some people are VERY crazy, as in you wouldn't want to get into an elevator with them, or meet them down a dark alley. Some people are just moderately crazy, which is how I like to categorize myself. And then some people aren't crazy at all - they carefully measure risk and danger, and always choose safety.

Depending on where you fall on the scale of crazy will determine how willing you will be to take chances as the world eases out of the pandemic. Speaking for myself, I'll continue to wear a mask and do social distancing even after I'm vaccinated. I've never been someone who enjoys being in crowds, and I don't interact this people much IRL (In Real Life) so wearing a mask hasn't been that difficult for me.

I live in Arizona, and there are a LOT of very crazy people there. These are the kind of people who seem to think that everything will be OK, and have no interest in safety precautions. They will only wear seatbelts because it's the law, and they scoff at me for wearing a bicycle helmet when I'm out pedaling around. There's a fairly large percentage of people who never believed that COVID-19 was real, and that it was all just an elaborate hoax, like global warming, or how votes are counted in the United States, or the moon landing. Theirs is the wonderful logic that would allow them to jump off of a building, and as they pass each floor just say, "So far, so good..!"

As a very shy and timid little kid, I surrounded myself with crazy friends, and they helped me to be a bit more crazy. By the time I was 19 I had become crazy enough to move from Minneapolis to Phoenix, all by myself, in a rickety little car held together with scotch tape and bailing wire. In a long life, whenever I look back on something that I've done and thought, "Well, that was kinda crazy!" I shudder a bit, and a feel a bit of pride. No, I've never been crazy enough to invest in land, or to gamble in Las Vegas, but I respect people who are that crazy.

I've been following the story of the pandemic, and I've very optimistic. Vaccines have been created, and people are taking them. No, it will never be 100%, that's not how the world works. But it will be good enough for people like me to do things that now I see the crazy people do.

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