Extinction Event

Paraphrasing the Z-man: The Covid hysteria combines multiple lines of social pathology; the civic religion (complete with martyrs and fanatics), the primitive fear of nature and Gaia's wrath, and the Puritan tendency to indulge in wave after wave of panics. This allowed normal people to temporarily (hopefully; I'm surprised how many people still cling to this, though) suspend their disbelief in such a fundamentally unlikely premise.

The scary thought is this, though: if you can convince people that a slightly worse than average, but still within the range of normal distribution seasonal flu is equivalent to an extinction event for humanity, then what will they not believe? We may well crash like a bumper car from one ridiculous hysteria to another until the whole of society finally finishes collapsing and we can rebuild along more sensible behavior. Assuming, of course, that it is us rebuilding, and not the descendants of the envious and entitled Third World hordes rebuilding in our place because we're all gone.

UPDATE: As long as I'm punting and paraphrasing the Z-man, let me quote a short post of Vox's too.

Dear Boomer,

No one, since the literal creation of Man, has accepted "but the Devil made me do it" as an excuse. No one forced you to reject your history, your traditions, your nation, and your ancestors. No one made you neglect your children and your grandchildren. No one forced you to go into debt and eat the seed corn.

You did those things. No one did them for you or to you. You were presented with more freedom than nearly any other generation in human history and you freely chose to be wicked. You created the "latchkey children". You failed to pass on a functional society. You failed to pass on the knowledge that your fathers passed on to you. You planted no trees. You strip-mined the economy. You left your wives, and left your husbands, and you shattered your families, simply because no one forcibly stopped you. And if anyone tried to convince you otherwise, you dismissed them as fascists and religious freaks.

So don't blame your parents, society, the Jews, Vietnam, the black community, the communists, Kondratiev waves, or anything else. None of your excuses matter and none of them will be accepted by anyone. The more you defend yourself, the more you will be despised by the younger generations and the generations still to come. You're not sexy, you're not cool, and the Beatles will be forgotten about five minutes after the last Boomer dies. Seventy is not the new twenty.

You will never be forgiven because you will never repent of your wickedness. So, eat, drink, and be merry today, for the Day of the Pillow is coming.

Ok, Boomer?

My own parents were a little on the young side for my age. Most of my Gen-X cohorts my age had Silent era parents; mine were cuspers; right on the in-between of the Silent and the Boomer generation, or in the final years of the Silents, perhaps. Which is moot; my parents were good parents, and other than some civic nationalist naivete, I have little to complain about their political or social positions and what they passed on to me and my siblings. But it's not about the individual. It's about the trend, the average, and the masses. Society is indeed the collection of individuals who make it up, but one who goes against the grain does not change the course of society very often.