Don't Live Your Lives in Unreasonable Fear

The purpose of this post is to counteract some of the silliness illustrated by the mainstream media today. 

If you are on a moving bicycle, you have zero chance of giving someone else COVID-19 and you have zero chance of contracting it that way. I'd worry more about a cyclist getting enough oxygen or the mask slipping and distracting the driver while in traffic or at another critical time.

I'd make a similar comment after viewing the photos of former Vice President Biden's wreath laying with his wife, Jill, at a Delaware military memorial today.

I intentionally chose the photo above as it is the closest he came to others -- the people who were driving his SUV.

Unless the news coverage is somehow defective (I checked several news media web sites, including the Wall Street Journal), Mr. and Mrs. Biden were not around others at any point in the ceremony.

Per the Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, and others, the masks were intended to draw a "contrast" with President Trump. Bottom line: they were theatrics.

From where I sit, the contrast to the President is unfavorable. There is zero chance of contracting or transmitting the illness in a wide open space like this. So, instead of projecting leadership, they are projecting unreasonable fear and timidity. Or, Darth Vader.

Unfortunately, today's Democrats' thinking seems to have evolved in the wrong direction from the great Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. His words, on March 4, 1933:

This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure, as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Please do not misunderstand: Precautions are still needed when in confined spaces (indoors or out) and around the elderly, immune-compromised and others. 

But, the idea that we cannot be outdoors enjoying the sunshine and warmer weather without masks, etc., is utter nonsense. It is, "fear itself."