This isn’t intended to be gratuitous dude-bashing.  My Y chromosome is a pre-existing condition that fundamentally shapes me, and I’m pretty darn fond of myself.  While I sometimes half-heartedly try to avoid some forms of my innate Neanderthal-ness, it seems pretty baked into my DNA.  I scratch inappropriately. I groom only sporadically. I mansplain with the worst of them.

But this business about men not social distancing in the Covid-19 Era is embarrassingly stupid and/or arrogant, even for us.  An Altarum survey tells the tale: Nearly one-quarter (24%) of men say they are going to public spaces “a lot” or “far more than usual,” compared to only 10% of women.

Why? Confronted about going to a public place with Covid-19 cases increasing rapidly, I can predict the reaction of many of my male friends.  A smirk. A shrug of the shoulders. A devil may care twinkle of the eye.  “You can’t live your life afraid of everything,” they’ll say. “If it’s my time, it’s my time.” 

For those of you who don’t speak Dude-ish, allow me to translate what these guys are trying to convey to the world: “I’m a bad ass. I’m courageous.”

Obviously, in this context, this is complete and utter bullshit.  Yes, courage sometimes means going into dangerous situations, and public gatherings in the middle of a pandemic are dangerous.  But let’s be real, fellas. You’re going to the dangerous situations to get yourself a beer, laugh, a corporate brownie point, or a thrill, not to rescue someone. 

Going into these dangerous situations for those reasons isn’t rushing into the smoke. It’s more like what suicide bombers do to themselves and innocents.  

As has been widely reported, Covid-19 is often carried by people who are asymptomatic or lightly symptomatic, so none of us knows who has the lethal germ-bomb duct-taped to our chest.  Walking into public gatherings armed with that knowledge isn’t remotely courageous.  It’s either ignorant or deplorably self-centered.

So fellow dudes, you won’t catch me scolding you for your utterly defensible scratching decisions.  But could we get just this life-and-death decision right?