Requiem for a caveman

Well, I guess a little extra exercise won’t hurt me…

Seems that, as of late, a trip to the store has been adding a few hundred extra steps to my daily 10,000. I’ll pull into a convenient parking stall, hop out, head for the door, get within five yards of the entrance, then turn on my heel, go back to the car, hang a mask between my ears and head back to go about my business.

Yeah, it’s annoying, but such is the world we live in.

And, like I said, a little extra exercise isn’t going to hurt me … but getting infected by that pesky virus most certainly will. So I put on my mask and most certainly hope you do the same.

It really ought to be a no-brainer. By now the science is pretty well settled. The fewer bugs we put in the air, the better off we all are. Simply put, the more of us who wear masks, the fewer of us who will get sick. Now it seems to me that bringing a nasty infection under control is a pretty good return on the minimal inconvenience of walking around with a swatch of cloth covering half of my ugly mug, What I don’t get are the folks who still take umbrage at my hiding the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.

And I’m really growing weary of all the folks who want to make politics out of everything from what I choose for lunch to how I sign my name. In the midst of a pandemic they’ve turned public health into partisan politics, resorting to barefaced lies and voodoo science in their quest to get in a final “I told you so…”

It’s hard to figure how, almost a year into a global disaster, I’m still being told that wearing a mask means I’m living in fear. Well, they’re right – I am living in fear, and if they had a lick of sense, they would be too.

Let’s face it, there are lots of times when fear is a very good thing. It’s because Og the Caveman’s cousin wasn’t afraid of that sabre tooth that Og turned out to be the many-times-great-grandpappy of us all. Recognizing stuff that ought to give us the willies or inspire the application of swift heels in reverse is the sort of wisdom that gives folks a leg up on personal prosperity and survival. They’re life’s little learning experiences … like the time when a three-year-old me toddled into a nest of ground-dwelling bumble bees and swiftly, and most memorably, learned there are times to stomp out a threat and times to run away.

Well folks, those bumble bees had nothing on the swarm of bugs we’re stirring up all around us. The voodoo priests of politics’ attempts at distraction notwithstanding, this virus isn’t magically going away, no matter how many corners the false prophets may claim to have turned. We’re dealing with a highly contagious disease that’s already cost us a quarter of a million lives, millions more sick and suffering, and it’s getting worse by the day.

So is it something to fear? You bet it is. But there’s something abroad more fearsome than COVID – with masks, distancing, avoiding crowds and other common-sense measures we can check the spread of the virus – but the spread of falsehoods, the defiance of science, the embrace of YouTube voodoo, and the blatant denial of reality, these are far more fearsome threats to our future and well-being. What I fear is fear itself; that we may come to the point where we no can no longer tell the ground squirrel from the sabre tooth.

I fear we may forget Og’s cousin.