An infectious strain of stupidity

People isolate while desperately trying to identify how the infection is spread

One of the fascinating aspects of the pandemic has been the proliferation and active propagation of stupidity. As individuals, all of us have blind spots and self-destructive impulses. However, as social animals, we supposedly use the wisdom of crowds to temper and control such impulses and compensate for individual areas of weakness. After all, collective wisdom is supposedly how sapiens became a dominant species.

This makes the events of the last 20 months counter-intuitive. Instead of collective wisdom, we’ve witnessed collective stupidity. We’ve seen stupidity from the po­l­itical leadership of most nations; stupi­dity from the media; stupidity from individuals.  

Pandemics are not