Are we too dumb to overcome coronavirus?

Remind me again what is meant by the green phase. Was it when Allegheny County moved to open the bars at limited capacity amid strict social distancing, or is the green phase synonymous with a brain tumor hangover, the result of responding so enthusiastically to the bars opening we closed them again in 25 days?

Great job, everybody. Maniacs.

I’ve been resistant to posing this question, but I fear it’s time. Here we are, six months into a life-and-death struggle with a global pandemic, half of 2020 shot to hell, so I’ll ask it: Is America simply too dumb to overcome this exigency? Have we crossed the Rubicon where rampant community dumbassery now obliterates any way forward?

With COVID-19 cases threatening to overwhelm hospitals in Texas, with the governor there announcing his own bar closing at the start of last weekend, a 100voice choir serenaded Vice President Mike Pence, head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, at an indoor church service attended by thousands Sunday in Dallas.

One can only assume none of these people at the “Celebrate Freedom Rally,” including the incorrigible lickspittle vice president, learned a single thing from the March story out of Washington state, where choir practice resulted in 59 coronavirus cases among 63 singers, two of whom died.

In that case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated along with the county health department and concluded, “The act of singing, itself, might have contributed to transmission through emission of aerosols, which is affected by loudness of vocalization.” And “certain persons, known as superemitters, who release more aerosol particles during speech than do their peers, might have contributed to this and previously reported COVID19 superspreading events. These data demonstrate the high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 and the possibility of superemitters contributing to broad transmission in certain unique activities.”

While hanging out in bars is hardly a unique activity, it might easily be the No. 1 superspreader among all our pastimes — excluding the occasional Trump rally. In my own bar experience (substantial), many people in bars tend to talk, and as they drink more, they talk more, and as they drink and talk more, they tend to talk louder, and now, when those people aren’t wearing masks and aren’t social distancing, they’re effectively setting off a smoke bomb of coronavirus.

Harper’s Restaurant and Prewpub opened in East Lansing, Mich., on June 8. Less than three weeks later, the Ingham County Health Department reported on Saturday 85 people with coronavirus cases had one thing in common — they had all been to Harper’s between June 12 and June 20. Eightyfive cases out of one bar in little more than a week.

One would only assume none of the people who are slamming bars from coast to coast, mostly young people, found this alarming, and it’s inextricably linked to the fact in Florida the median age for COVID-19 cases dropped from 65 to 37.

Anyone who grew up in a America with even a modicum of faith in its world-renowned education system could assume each succeeding generation would get smarter —more able to analyze information, more attuned to critical thinking, data and analytics — not dumber, but here we are.

Young people might be able to walk through a bout with COVID-19 (and might not), but that’s a conceit that’s almost terminally dumb, and maybe not almost.

“I want to be clear about one thing,” Dr. Murtaza Akhter, of the University of Arizona, was telling a cable news audience Monday. “Young people are also less likely to die of a car accident if they’re in one compared to the elderly, but they still come in looking very, very bad when they’ve been in a rollover and have been ejected through the windshield. So for young people to take the mentality that, ‘Well, the virus isn’t that bad for me,’ is kind of a preposterous way of looking at it. I’ve seen plenty of them come into the hospital being very sick, need to be admitted, need to be intubated. And on top of that, they are a vector for disease, and they’re spreading it to others. For them to act this way is particularly selfish if that’s how they’re acting.”

The pandemic has given rise to a couple of related cliches, both instructive in their way. One is, “We’re in this together.” That one’s true. One way or the other, to one extent or the other, we’re all at risk. The other ready cliche is, “We’re all in this together.” That one’s false. Not all of us. Masks have clearly cleaved the country into two teams. There’s no “all.” If the president would put a mask on, there would at least be the potential for solidarity. But he is too enslaved by ego and not giving in to the media and the scientists and the experts he hates. Tired of winning yet?

This is a pity. If our most recent existential crisis was World War II, give a thought now and again to the sacrifices our grandparents made to defeat fascism. They worked around the clock for the war effort, rationed gas, kerosene, shoes, sugar, coffee, meat, canned fish, cheese, canned milk, bicycles, typewriters. It’s embarrassing they did all that for four years while in this, the crisis of our lives, we couldn’t even stay out of the bars for four months.

But, look, you’ve still got most of today. The bars don’t close until 5 p.m. Superemitters welcome!