Party on, dude!
Our institutes of higher learning have a foolproof plan...
Today’s cartoon was inspired by several news events that made an impression on me and Number 1 on that list was a video of a house party at KU. Despite numerous warnings against this type of behavior, a bunch of kids decided to get together and party like it’s 1999.
As I mentioned in a previous post and have now turned into a cartoon, colleges that want to stay open are depending on the maturity of 19-year-olds.
I’d give you a list of all the dumb stuff I did at 19, but I’m not sure the statute of limitations has run out on some of my bad decisions. Let’s just say I wasn’t the most mature person at 19 (an issue I still struggle with) and anyone counting on me to behave like a rational adult was bound to be disappointed.
After reading the KU house party story, I ran into a story by the Associated Press and it said a lot of teachers are retiring rather than go back into the classroom. Some of those teachers are frustrated by the lack of concern schools are showing for their situation.
And it turns out teachers have good reason to worry.
According to the AP, teachers in at least three states have died after bouts with COVID-19 and in the state of Mississippi alone there have been 604 cases among teachers and staff.
Which brings us to a third story that has some relevance.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
The frosting on all this cake was a Kansas City Star piece by Eric Adler that looked back on how local schools handled the 1918 flu epidemic and it seems we haven’t learned a thing.
Back then there was no national edict to close schools (just like now) so schools were left on their own to decide how to handle the epidemic (just like now) and there was disagreement between those who valued safety and those who valued commerce (just like now).
There were also people denying there actually was a pandemic (repeat it with me…just like now).
Because people couldn’t get organized and decide on a course of action and stick with that course of action (just like now) Kansas City schools shut and opened three times. They’d get tired of being shut down and reopen and then have to shut down again; a meandering course of stupidity and lack of willpower that we’re currently in the process of repeating.
Now here’s a quote from Eric’s article about a study of the 1918 pandemic by the University of Michigan:
Perhaps not surprising, it found that cities that took early action — banning public gatherings, closing schools, businesses, churches, isolating the sick, wearing masks — had the lowest mortality rates. Cities that kept the measures in place the longest did the best.
Kansas City, like St. Louis and San Francisco, did act quickly and decisively. Within 10 days of its first case, it closed schools, theaters, implemented bans that, by some estimates, possibly reduced transmission rates up to 30% to 50%.
But the town of then 250,000 residents failed to keep it up.
Instead, as historians have documented, it turned to political infighting between factions that wanted to keep businesses closed to protect health and those who wanted businesses open to protect commerce. Businesses closed and reopened, closed and reopened.
The result:
“People died,” Susan Sykes Berry told The Star.
If you want to read Eric Adler’s story for yourself, here’s that link:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/education/article245629680.html
So the 1918 flu epidemic that would eventually kill 50 million people worldwide and about 675,000 Americans was considered a hoax by some very wishful thinkers and if George Santayana was right (he’s the author of the “those who cannot remember the past” quote) we still need to knock off about 480,455 Americans before some people take the current pandemic seriously.
And with the number of room-temperature IQs in this country, I believe we can reach that goal.
Party on, dude.