Breaching isolation and quarantine

orders seems to be the latest idiocy encouraged by the "anti-vax" mob. There were big protests in two of Downunder's largest cities yesterday. I saw some of the footage on the evening news service and was left bewildered by the behaviour of these fools.

I have one nephew living in one city and another nephew living in the other city. I have a niece living in one of those cities too. One nephew and my niece are finding it very difficult to home school their children and work from home. They have no time at all for the protestors. Some of those protestors will have caught the virus and they will go on to spread it to yet more people. The protest was the sort of event which is almost certain to be a "super-spreader" event. Why on earth would you want to be part of that?

I thought about this again last night. Is it like smoking, drinking to excess, taking drugs, speeding and taking other risks? 

Many years ago now I was sitting in a staff meeting at university when something happened I have never forgotten. Back then people did smoke in staff meetings and I would come out of the meetings reeking of other people's cigarette smoke. I have never even tried to smoke a cigarette and I hated it. It had just been announced that the Director of the Research Unit had cancer and a very short time to live. It left most of the staff shocked.

I knew he was ill, very ill. He had, in a rare moment of confidence, confided in me when I had stopped to ask if he was "all right".  No, he wasn't. He told me this and then asked me to keep the matter to myself. He had not told me he was dying although I did wonder. I just knew he was a very sick man. I liked him. He had been very good to me and it shocked me for more than one reason.

Now the staff meeting was left shocked and bewildered by the news. All those highly intelligent academic people had not really noticed how ill one of their own was. And then one of the senior staff asked a question of one of the professors, "How can you sit there and go on smoking when you have just told us about J....?"

His response was, "You never think it is going to happen to you."

That has to be it. We never want to believe that anything like that is going to happen to us. We see all the bad news. We hear all the bad news. We talk about all the bad news. But, bad news happens to other people. It doesn't happen to us. Our families are not the families who are supposed to have children die young or young children left without a parent. They are not supposed get ill or lose their jobs or get into trouble with the law or any of the thousand and one things that happen to other people.

All I can think of those idiots yesterday is that they are thinking like this. They don't believe anything is going to happen to them. I hope it doesn't - apart from a hefty fine for their stupid, selfish behaviour.