If you were wondering how the Second Pandemic (Stupidity) is doing, you need look no further than the Great State of Alabama.
How do I know this? I was driving to an appointment this morning, and was listening to NPR on the radio. The reporter was interviewing 3 Infection Control physicians who worked in hospitals in Alabama. While describing the overwhelming task of trying to cope with the influx huge of people who were sick and dying from COVID-19, it was mentioned that there were many of these sick and dying patients (and there families) who were insisting that COVID-19 did not exist.
While there is a huge controversy in this country about getting vaccinated and wearing masks, I am not seeing any reports in the news (interviews, people carrying signs, etc.) who are saying it is because COVID-19 does not exist; the main reason seems to revolve around perceived freedom of choice.
In Alabama, though, people are laying in hospital beds dying from COVID-19, and many of them (and their family members) are insisting it is not from COVID. The fact that 600,000+ people in the US and well over a million people worldwide have died from this does nothing to sway them from their belief. It is a worldview that is, well, a bit out there.
If you remember a few years back, the Darwin Awards were quite popular. The award was "presented" to an individual who did something to remove himself from the gene pool in a spectacular way. Perhaps dying from a somewhat preventable disease because of denying it exists may not rise to the level of "spectacular" but, if we are a little less fussy about this, the Darwin Awards have the potential to make a comeback in Alabama. Sad, but it appears that there is no end in sight for this particular pandemic
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