Are School Smarts Enough to Reject Coronamania?

As a high school senior, I took Physics. Because I test well in math, I was put in the class with the smartest STEM kids in the school, most of whom went on to such colleges as MIT, Cornell, Dartmouth, RPI, Tufts, Lafayette and Wisconsin, et al., to become engineers. But the kind of math on the PSAT didn’t encompass the concepts taught in Physics class. It was sometimes hard to keep up. It didn’t help that I let go of the academic rope halfway through senior year.

There were about a half-dozen juniors in the class. One was named Marty. Marty played guitar during the Sunday night service at our church. He sometimes played Eagles songs before mass started. Most of us want to be good at something that we’re not really cut out to do. Marty wasn’t much of a singer. But he was real good at Physics.

Once every three weeks or so, our teacher, Mr. Stephens, subjected us to a 45-minute period-long test. I did OK on the first few tests. But the tests became more challenging as the year went on. When I’d look, from my back row desk, at the analog clock along the room’s right side, I was often behind schedule and sometimes came up with improbable answers, such as finding that the elephant in the problem weighed 2.3333 kilograms. I knew something in my analysis was wrong but lacked the time to start from scratch.

Almost without exception, with 15 minutes to go in the test period, Marty rose from his seat on the left/window side of the room, carried his paper to the front of the room, dropped it on Mr. Stephens’ desk and smirked as he bouncily strode out of the room. As I still had half of the test to go, that smirk pissed me off. 

Stephens was old school. A day or two later, after he had graded the tests, he handed them back. He always distributed them in order of score, starting with the highest. I knew this without asking. As the year went on, I went from getting my paper back early with a high score to getting it back late with a low one.

Marty always was one of the first kids to receive his graded paper. A junior outperforming the best senior STEM kids in the school was impressive enough. But the most impressive part was how fast Marty figured out the answers. 

I just looked up Marty on the Net. He has multiple Engineering degrees and heads some engineering institute.

In September, 2022, my normally insightful nephew prefaced a comment by saying, during a group breakfast, “Now that we’re post-Covid…”

I asked him why he thought we were post-Covid. He said it’s because people think it’s over. In turn, I asked: why do people think it’s over? He said it’s because people aren’t freaked out by it. Then I asked him why people aren’t freaked out by it. He says because they’ve had it and survived.

At various times in 2023, other people have echoed my nephew’s belief that even though people are still getting Covid, and some are still said to be dying of it and some are still masking and vaxx-boosting, “Covid is over.”

When enough people thought it was over, it was over. 

Though I’m glad the mania is over, that explanation doesn’t sound very scientific to me. Nor should it have taken nearly that long to figure out the Scam.

Near the end of The Wizard of Oz, the good witch tells Dorothy that she, Dorothy, could have gone home any time she wanted. Hearing this delights and surprises Dorothy. She clicks her ruby slippers and magically goes back to Kansas. Her nightmare was over.

During Coronamania, Americans were like Dorothy. We could have gone home—back to normal social life—any time we wanted to.

Fundamentally, most people have finally figured out what I knew about Covid in March, 2020, when nearly everyone I knew told me I was evil for opposing lockdowns.

Took y’all long enough.

There’s an additional sign that even though Covid itself isn’t over, Coronamania is, at least for most people. After over a year of vaxx failure, the now-widespread refusal to take additional shots reveals that more people are belatedly perceiving that the shots are worthless. And much worse than that. Remember how two years ago anyone who declined the shots was selfish, stupid and didn’t deserve to have a job, receive medical treatment, attend school, or enter a gym or a bar?

It’s been a remarkable— and yet, largely unremarked upon—reversal. 

I figured out the Scamdemic right away. I was like Marty, but in real life. Though I’m still not much of an Eagles fan.

I wonder if Marty supported the lockdowns, school closures, masks, testing, and tracing. And if he vaxxed. Because…Science!

I hope Marty’s Physics aptitude carried over to real life. Except for that smirk, he wasn’t a bad guy.