Yesterday, I took my car in for an oil change. It was a nice sunny day, so I decided to wait outside and watch the world go by while the work was being completed. I was about 20 feet from the sidewalk and had a clear view for two blocks in either direction. This was a semi-industrial area so there wasn’t much foot traffic.
I watched a young woman, probably barely into her 30’s walk down the sidewalk. She was wearing a mask. Now, I was the closest person to her and, as she passed by, I was still more than 20 feet away. But there she was. Outside on a nice sunny day. Wearing a mask…and a face shield.
Yup. This 30-something woman was walking down the sidewalk with no one anywhere near her and she was wearing a facemask and a shield.
The first thing that struck me was the thought that one of us is crazy. On one hand, you’ve got me, someone who doesn’t follow any of the recommendations for protecting oneself from the “COVID crisis” (oh, and I’m still alive BTW). And, on the other hand, you’ve got her, someone who is too afraid to take a breath of fresh air.
It doesn’t get much different than that. Clearly one of us is nucking futs.
Then I started wondering, which one of us is right? It didn’t take long before the answer hit me. The woman wearing both a mask and a face shield while walking alone outside is totally insane.
Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain.
Ask yourself this question: Who are the most paranoid (and I mean this in a good way) and well-prepared people you can think of? If anyone was going to exert an abundance of caution over a situation, who do you think it would be?
That’s right. Preppers.
Preppers are people the most forward-thinking people I know. They dedicate themselves to being prepared for TEOTWAWKI (The End of The World as We Know It). If anyone was going to cover themselves with PPE, and slather themselves with disinfectant to protect themselves from “The World’s Most Dangerous Disease”, it would be the people who have prepared themselves for the worst.
You know what? They’re not. At least not that I can tell.
I haven’t seen one person walking around wearing a gas mask. Nor have any of my friends mysteriously disappeared and are now presumably hunkering down in their underground bunkers (I’m assuming that at least one of the people know is a prepper). The prepper Web sites don’t talk about the 10 best ways to protect yourself from COVID (I checked) and they don’t show recipes for making homemade hand sanitizer.
High-tech respiration devices and biohazard gear (you know, the kind that actually work) are in stock and readily available. But the N95 masks hoarded by people like the woman I saw on the street (you know, the kind that are useless) are all gone.
Don’t you think it says something about yourself when the people that are routinely mocked and ridiculed for being too paranoid are less paranoid than you are?
The preppers are looking at the people willingly getting injected with an experimental drug, and wearing facemasks, and “social distancing” and they’re thinking to themselves, “amateurs”. Well, it’s more likely that they’re thinking, “pussies”.
Quick history lesson: Coal miners used to bring canaries into the mines with them. The birds are quite sensitive to the various toxic gasses that can concentrate in areas of the cave. As long as the canary was OK, the miners knew it was safe to breathe the air. If the canary keeled over dead, then the miners hightailed it out of there.
You can think of preppers as a canary in a cave. Except instead of being the first to die in a cave, the preppers would be the last ones surviving in their underground bunkers. As long as the preppers are OK, you’re OK. And, if the preppers aren’t scared, you shouldn’t be scared either.
