Yes, we can find examples of people doing and saying things that are abjectly stupid or staggeringly inappropriate right now, and I agree that it’s wrong.

But we must also be careful of ascribing the behavior of a negligent segment of the population to humans in general.

This is a move that is suggested by the media organizations that profit on outrage and use it to invent and enforce factionization … which, in case it isn’t obvious, makes us all weaker and more vulnerable… to various cons and manipulations that circulate in the media under the pretense of news or information.

While it’s true that there’s a miserable, stupid, careless segment of the population inclined to misbehave during crisis, it’s not true that the actions of that segment typify the nature or behavior of the species as a whole… or people ‘in general’.

“He employed… the congregantes pessimi rhetological fallacy, being a fallacy of presuming (or asserting) that some miserable or negligent segment of a population represents the general character of the entire population… or even humanity as a whole.

It is this specific fallacy upon which much of our modern ‘news’ is founded… and popularized. It is also used to create factions within actual populations. (2020)”

— the invention of a new rhetorical fallacy, 04.2020