In defense of people who don’t fear the 'rona, COVID-19 - January 2022


It's January 6th of 2022, and as promised I'm reporting in real time how people are reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic. And if the way that many people are reacting is puzzling you, I think that I can help explain. And first you have to start with is the language that they use.

I myself use the term COVID-19, which indicates that I consider the situation to be not only real, but extremely deadly. And since I'm one of those people who started wearing a mask out in public long before it became an official mandate, you know where I stand - nervous.

On the other hand there are people who have a different point of view, and are either dismissing the whole thing as a hoax, or at least it's all been blown out of proportion. They use casual and breezy terms, like 'rona, which is short for Coronavirus, which is what COVID-19 is.

And I would like to take a few minutes here to defend these people, because I've seen it many times before as a reaction to something horrific, and practically unthinkable. And since I lived in California, I'll start with earthquakes, and how the expressions that I heard people that were light and breezy, such as "did you feel the jolt yesterday?" or similar. Earthquakes freaked me out, and I'd run around like a chicken with its head cut off, much to the amusement of people who just shrugged their shoulders.

The fire in Calabasas, California in 2013

I also hit the panic button a few years ago when I was housesitting in Calabasas, and a major fire surrounded the neighborhood, which was in the hills. I had never seen anything like that outside of a science fiction movie, and I was so horrified that I visited the next door neighbor, who yawned, and referred to it as something like a "cheerful blaze" and took me to another neighbor's house who gave me popcorn so I could watch the fire from their backyard.

In my parents' backyard in Minneapolis in 1982

Hang on if you think that I'm picking on California, it happens everywhere. There were times in Minneapolis, where I grew up, that the combination of below zero temperatures and massive snowfalls had me worried, but the locals would just say that it was a "bit nippy" and that the snowfall was "no big deal". I'm inclined to think that you could think of lots of other examples of people being casual about tornadoes, or anything. I suppose during the last days of Pompeii, someone said (in Latin of course), the mountain seemed to be smokin' a bit.

The Last Days of Pompeii.

And so I will defend these people, who will sit back, pour themselves another glass of wine, and accept things. And I'm not talking about people who hit the panic button at the last minute, and go running for help, I mean people who will see it through, and go down with the ship, smiling all the while.

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