The Virus Doesn’t Care About Your Anger
Anxiety over the pandemic has turned into vitriol. But you can’t be mad at a virus.
Before rows of cars started rolling through America’s cities, with people blocking entrances to hospitals, raising placards, hectoring public officials, and loudly venting about not being able to get their hair done, a single person seemed to capture the mood of the shelter-in-place resistance: Brady Sluder.
“If I get corona, I get corona,” Sluder said in a taped interview during his Florida spring break in March, just as the U.S. was beginning to feel the weight of Covid-19 and physical distancing measures were being implemented across the country. “At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” Sluder said he and his friends had been planning their trip to Miami for months; no virus could stop them.
Sluder was branded a #COVIDIOT, an entitled narcissist, and worse. He along with others featured in the same viral news clip were widely derided for putting the health and safety of others at great risk for their own personal happiness — symbols of a generation who felt that they were owed the simplest pleasures and were prepared to risk death to indulge in them.
