I hope Farhad Manjoo’s family survives the holidays


The NY Times published a dangerously goofy piece by Manjoo that went through the scientific advice that said you should stay home to avoid spreading the pandemic, and then concluded with a mind-boggling declaration that he was going to ignore the evidence and go visit his elderly parents anyway. It’s a bizarre article that starts off informative and smart, and then falls off a cliff into wishful self-delusion. I thought about writing a bit about it, since it’s an incredibly vivid example of smart-stupid.

I’m saved some effort, though, because Rebecca Watson has already dealt with it.

I do hope his family is OK, but I also hope he is now locked down in quarantine before he goes casually gallivanting off to spread his viruses blithely with anyone because he wants to.

Comments

  1. Artor says

    We are living in a horror movie where the dumb kids at the abandoned cabin split up to go looking for the axe-murderer with a dodgy flashlight, and keep walking backwards when they know he is stalking them. That never made sense in slasher flicks, and yet it’s a staple of the genre. Now I realize they were more realistic that I ever imagined.

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    Fatalities from the Thanksgiving wave of infections will probably crest on or shortly before Christmas, which ought to cast a morbid light on the Big Holiday.

    With hospitalizations rising a couple of weeks before then, maybe possibly with luck people won’t go traveling so much as they would have. Offsetting that: the ones who do drive and fly all around will be those most careless about basic pandemic prevention measures all along, so we’ll surely see yet another peak in January.

    Somehow, the Republicans will blame it all on Biden & Harris.

  3. kome says

    Between the idiotic yet all too common mindset expressed in that article and the Supreme Court blocking an attempt to regulate large gatherings because religion, I think we can expect to see spikes in cases and deaths in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

    I’d feel very differently about this if the virus didn’t have the tendency to also infect and kill innocent people who tried their best to follow medical expert advice but who have the misfortune of being unable to escape the idiots who still go to attend large gatherings.

  4. birgerjohansson says

    ….and the pressure on the health care system will make it harder to deal with the usual flu season, adding to the fatalities among the elderly.
    .
    When the various vaccines become available they will go to the most vulnerable first, and the loud-mouthed ones of 20 to 60 years of age will get frustrated and blame Biden.
    Winter storms: Cristians wiĺl blame the “ungodly” Biden administration for incurring Zod’s wrath.
    And if there is an earthquake somewhere, guess who will get the blame?

  5. Artor says

    birgerjohansson, the first round of vaccines will go to celebrities, politicians, and sportsball players.

  6. PaulBC says

    I think the anti-maskers are likely to be anti-vaxxers as well. At least, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Large parts of the US are ungovernable. I have trouble seeing a silver lining to any of it.

  7. says

    PaulBC @6: The silver lining is that the wave of infections that the Covidiots are industriously working to ensure the occurrance of, is going to disproportionately affect the Covidiots themselves, plus their friends, associates, and families. Or so I think… its hard to tell, that silver is so damned tarnished…