Fear of Idiots!

By Edin Urjan Kukavica

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Human stupidity should obviously never be underestimated. Especially if it is accompanied by extreme recklessness and impudence. Three examples we know of: a chubby truck driver who claims to be healthy and has no intention of self-isolating, let alone quarantining, a "respected businessman" who, in the midst of the crisis, went skiing in Italy and then hid it from everyone, infecting friends and doctors, thus endangering God knows how many lives, and a border police officer who, for money, allowed three people from a country with a travel ban due to the virus to enter the country... or, to mention a fourth, probably the most bizarre, the already infected person who craved ćevapi... these are just metaphors for the idiocy we will face in the coming days and weeks, and certainly months.

To make matters worse, these are only the cases that have become known... unfortunately, there are incomparably more of those we don't know about and probably never will. But even if there were only these three cases, it's enough to make a normal person's blood run cold. Social networks - I am sure, although I have no proof - are flooded with protests against this or that warning, recommendation, and direct order to ban gatherings in larger groups, whether in sports centers, shopping malls, churches, or mosques. How much sense does it make to explain to such people that the world has not conspired against their appetite and desire for communion with God, and that, although it may not be a problem for them to be infected without knowing it, the problem is that they will infect people around them, and even more so, they will infect medical and other staff, whom we already desperately lack - thanks to wise personnel and all other policies... and finally, make the entire social infrastructure - from hospital capacities, equipment, and personnel to public spaces - deficient, even unusable for God knows how long.

Indeed, although unconfirmed, scientific research shows that particles of saliva and cough, thirty times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, can remain in the air for hours (it is quite enough to pass through that cloud), and on surfaces ranging from stainless steel to cardboard for up to 28 days! Furthermore, in countries where the level of development and organization is negligible, the number of infected people is at least five times higher than reported; even in incomparably more developed and organized countries, one carrier of the virus currently poses a danger to six completely healthy people... and so on. In other words, a smart person needs only a hint, and a foolish one won't understand even a club to the head, let alone a cloud of invisible viruses in the air.

Every crisis has its resident idiots, mostly selfish and narcissistic characters who, for some reason, consider everything a conspiracy against them personally and the group they represent - they are convinced - as well as those who will try to profit from the crisis and those affected by it in every way. In our country, crisis is a permanent characteristic of the state and situation, and idiots - especially those who think they know better than experts - have multiplied to unimaginable proportions. Explaining to such people that the world has not conspired against their demands, but that they themselves represent the carriers of a conspiracy not only against the rest of the world but against their own reason, is a task comparable to Sisyphus's eternal punishment.

However, for those who can (and want to) understand... Social responsibility is a matter of maturity, awareness, and conscience. We are not born with it, nor do we learn it as such; it is a combination or intersection of personal intelligence, family upbringing, and established social agreements, contracts, and rules that apply to all members of a society, regardless of their personal and individual needs and desires. In a way, it should extend "from top to bottom" as a kind of dictate that we are obliged to adhere to, but unfortunately, we have not witnessed it in recent decades. Even more unfortunately, we are not witnessing it now, nor elementary logic. Namely, however subjective it may be, elementary logic at the very least dictates that the Civil Protection Headquarters should be commanded by the Minister of Health in this situation, not the Minister of Finance, and then or in addition to the constant government sessions, continuous informing of the population, and rigorous measures for violators of the imposed measures... i.e., general mobilization of all resources - from human to material - disregarding everything that has divided us so far, especially entity and cantonal lines of authority.

Social responsibility implies compassion, solidarity, mutual aid... all that which, until recently, was quite innate, natural, and normal for us... why should it sound like science fiction now?