American Universities Are Retarded

Marginal Revolution: You people are crazy

So, I decided to attempt a measurement to quantify this phenomenon. On Wednesday, September 22nd, in the 1:00 pm hour, I observed 400 Stanford cyclists on Lasuen Mall, a popular campus street for bicycles. I simply noted whether each cyclist wore a mask, a helmet, neither, or both. Here are the final tallies:

Total cyclists: 400 – (100%)

No mask, no helmet: 195 – (49%)

Mask, no helmet: 134 – (34%)

Helmet, no mask: 42 – (10%)

Mask and helmet: 29 – (7%)

That works out to a masking rate of 41% and helmet-wearing rate of 17%. So, Stanford students are about twice as likely to wear a mask on a bicycle as a helmet. To be certain, there’s a margin of error here — I can only count so many cyclists at a time, and I’m sure I missed some. But the point stands that at one of America’s leading research universities, students wear masks on bicycles at a higher rate than they wear helmets.

Original source: Stanford students are more likely to wear masks on bicycles than helmets (Archive link)

I think this anecdote is instructive in understanding the social dynamics that have emerged in the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly intelligent and well-rounded people (Stanford students, for example) have adopted bizarre, pointless habits to comport with new expectations about how to "stay safe" -- like wearing masks outdoors -- all while continuing in much more risky behaviors. This is not to say that riding a bicycle without a helmet is *especially* risky, or that I believe helmets should be mandated (they shouldn’t). But it’s absolutely a bigger risk than COVID-19 for a vaccinated twenty-something.

It's a bigger risk than for a healthy unvaccinated 20-something too.

If Stanford produces stupid lemmings, what do you think is coming out of other universities? Do you really think these people are going to be in the ruling class in 20 years? I think a revolution is coming because the elites retarded their children. The ruling class is going be removed from power by a foreign or domestic adversary, or by mobs of angry starving citizens.