So who’s the sheep, anyway?
As if it’s not enough to be called “sheep” by the quasi-literate who don’t know the difference between their, there and they’re, my life is also imperiled every time I go to the grocery store. Exhibit A: last night I had to run out to the local market. The place was lousy with the unmasked. Apart from me, there wasn’t a mask in sight. Boris Johnson has just relaxed the rules for wearing masks in public places indoors, and we all know what a font of verity he is.
So who’s the sheep, anyway? I say it’s the idiots who let the corrupt government decide for them when it’s safe to go unmasked. Meanwhile scientists are still warning us that it’s too early. I’m shocked that there are so many people who are so casually prepared to entrust their lives to the likes of the British Prime Minister, a known serial liar.
It’s proof to me that most people don’t really believe what medical science and the doctors who practice it tell us. When you consider how easy it is to put on a mask and how much safer it makes us if everyone does it, it’s appalling how few people actually are willing to do it, and how quick they are to find the flimsiest pretext to stop.
Getting vaccinated, wearing a mask, social distancing and washing your hands isn’t stopping you or anyone else from “getting back to normal.” It isn’t an infringement on anyone’s personal freedom. It has nothing to do with the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s just a common sense way to help everyone stay safer. That’s all.
The ultimate expression of stupidity is Sarah Palin, who has been spotted dining twice at the same New York City restaurant after she tested positive for Covid-19. She was unmasked and casually chatting with friends who were sitting right next to her. She was in clear violation of the law,
Palin is a truculent anti-vaxxer who imagines herself a champion for the rights of the common people. She is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the New York Times, one that she is almost certainly going to lose. The lawsuit alleges libel because the Times published an editorial suggesting that Palin’s political action committee incited the 2011 mass shooting that wounded former Rep. Gabby Giffords when it published an advertisement that showed Giffords and other Democrats with crosshairs over them.
The lawsuit has been delayed because Palin tested positive for Covid. She is now passing her disease around to her friends. Palin’s indifference to the peril she is subjecting others to is the ultimate expression of anti-vaxxer stupidity and sociopathic disregard for the lives of other people. But then we’ve always known that Sarah Palin was stupid.
Sometimes the best way to spot a bad idea is to look at the people who champion it. Anti-vaxxers like Palin and her fellow-travellers (the ones who are still alive, anyway) are either corrupt or idiots or both. Our best way out of this pandemic is to get vaccinated and boosted, keep wearing masks, keep social distancing and scrupulously wash your hands. It’s not rocket science, it’s just science. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.