Beware of the Pot Lickers!

     According to the Urban Dictionary a “pot licker” is a derogatory reference for someone who is poor and would lick the bottom of the pot for all of the scraps and leftovers. 
    That’s not my understanding. I often heard it used to refer to someone who would lick a chamber pot. i.e. a nasty person. You might ask, who would do such a thing? 
    Well, just think of the idiots who are taking the “coronavirus challenge” and licking toilet seats...they are pot lickers in the true sense of the word. 
    Consider the irresponsible actions of people like the clip of Buddy Sluder that went viral. "If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not gonna let it stop me from partying," That’s what he said at spring break in Miami. 
    And, think of the irresponsible Florida officials who didn’t take any action until after the break was over...financial reasons, you know. 
    This challenge appears to have started with pot licker Ava Louise, a 22-year-old who went viral for licking an airplane toilet seat and posting “Please RT this so people can know how to properly be sanitary on the airplane.” She was looking for fame and in 2019, she appeared on Dr. Phil’s television program; Dr. Phil likes sensationalism, too. 
     We’ve all seen weather people on television yelling, “Snow tonight. I’ll tell you at ten how it will affect your morning commute.” Dreading the possibility of driving in to work in a raging blizzard, we tune in at ten only to find out there’s a 10 percent chance that we could wake up to a cosmetic coating of snow.
     Someone posted a meme on Facebook stating: 112,036 recovered from the virus (and this number increases every minute)... try sharing this instead of the death toll! I got to thinking about this and decided there is a reason why no good news is reported. 
     According to the site I visited, here in the United States there have been 145,531 cases with 4,574 having recovered and 2,616 having died. This translates to 8 deaths per million people which is far, far lower than the 192 in Italy and 157 in Spain. Indeed, the death rate is low (easy to say assuming you or a loved one is not affected), the number of serious cases is low and many are recovering. 
     Media concentrates on the death toll because sensationalism sells. Officials concentrate on it because if they didn’t most people would not take the threat seriously and you’d have situations like happened in Florida. 

    There are just too many pot lickers, literal and figurative, and they would make things worse for the rest of us.  After all, if they don't care if they get sick, why would they care if they were coughing and blowing their infected snot and spit all over everybody else?