The San Diego Union-Tribune ran a story this week about the supposed stigma that those who recover from COVID-19 are experiencing once they resume day-to-day activities.
I feel for them, but the story only briefly touches on another group of people who have been stigmatized, and in a way far more irritating than what former COVID-19 patients have had to endure.
At least the recovered people get sympathetic stories such as the Union-Tribune one. In contrast, the people who dare question anything the experts say, “experts” often defined as “whomever the national media want to elevate as an authority,” are shamed, shunned, and characterized as anti-science.
Here’s just one example from the Union-Tribune story, quoting Steve Padilla, a Democratic councilman in Chula Vista, California:
She interrupted the women speaking in front of them by saying she had overheard their conversation and would like to introduce them to her father, who almost died of COVID-19.
‘I said, ‘Yes, I was very sick, and I hope you’ll take it seriously,’ Padilla said. He recalled the woman he addressed appeared horrified on two fronts: embarrassed being called out for her comments and alarmed to encounter someone who once had the disease.
I understand that we’re dealing with the spread of a virus that is currently estimated to have a maximum death rate of 1%. But what exactly is it that has people such as Padilla and his daughter feeling emboldened to inject themselves into random people’s conversations with the intention of belittling them?
Anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention knows that the “experts” have gotten a lot of things wrong in the last seven months. Even the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci’s track record on the coronavirus is, at best, spotty.
Joe Biden’s campaign thought it would be cute to have the former veep film a scripted clip of him doing what these people have come to do best — shame someone about wearing a mask.
In the short clip, a man is seen outside with no one else around, walking his dog. “Dave, what the hell?” Biden says directly to the man through his earphones. “I told you to wear your mask outside. You need to wear your mask outside. I don’t care if you’re just walking your dog.”
The guy, again, is outside with no one around, a scenario in which all the science says no mask is required.
But how good must it feel for the Bidens of America to belittle and shame anyone not “listening to the experts,” according to their own version of whatever expert opinion is supposed to be.
That type of stigmatization is supposed to be okay. Stigmatizing works both ways, and if anyone deserves to be shamed, it’s the people like Padilla and Biden who put on such pushy public displays, speaking with absolute certainty despite not knowing what the hell they’re talking about.
