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Very similar to today people still do not believe they can be affected by Covid even though 200,000+ people have been. There’s a quote somewhere near this one that talks about how many people died in some war or plague and how many theatres full of people would be equivalent and people don't really understand abstract quantities, so one would have to literally take 5 theatres of people to a large square and execute them in order for people to understand the gravity of the situation. Camus says “stupidity has a knack for getting its way.” This also can be translated as dumb people always need to get their way and won't heed warnings meant to protect them. And also how many things out of trumps mouth are stupid and false, but that doesnt prevent them from circulating and affecting millions of people. The contrast between this and today is that we had already seen the virus spreading like crazy in other countries. It was the exact same virus that would soon affect the US, but we still didn’t take precaution and didn’t shut down because we thought it would be different for us. I like how Camus talks about how self centered this is. I don't know that I would say the general population was “wrapped up in [itself]” because if they really were paying attention they would see that they should take precautions to protect their safety, maybe so wrapped up in their lives not thinking they can be disrupted. Could say rich influential people and the president were wrapped up in themselves.

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I thought this was interesting because it was so similar to what happened (and is still happening) in response to the pandemic. A lot of people were in denial. I think it was at least partially because we’ve started to feel kind of invincible, particularly when it comes to illnesses because most are either preventable, curable, or treatable. Having to face the fact that there will always be things that are beyond our control as humans is terrifying, and a lot of people just didn’t want to face it at all. 

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It doesn't matter, and I can keep doing what I've been doing with no disturbances, until it affects me, and at that point, it's too late.
They liked to think of themselves as free, but by ignoring what's actually limiting them, they're confining themselves within it.

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Throughout reading the book I knew that it would relate to Covid because it's about a pandemic but this passage was aggressively close. In both situations people aren't taking it seriously and refusing to do what needs to be done. I would have never thought that History would repeat itself like this but it continues to.

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While I understand Camus' point about pestilences, I don't think that war and plague are comparable events.
This passages seems to disavow humanism and assert that we must consider our surroundings and all that happens when conducting ourselves in order to act in a reasonable manner.

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Covid-19 was downplayed by many professionals in its early stage, just like some of the doctors are doing in our book. I also think the reason that many people in our country don't like taking precautions to prevent Covid is because of America's individualist mindset. It is common knowledge that Covid is a public health crisis, yet people are not careful because it wont directly affect them or they have a "every man for himself" attitude

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I completely agree with the last quote because that is mostly the way that we are dealing with pandemic of today. People think that everything is ok. When in real term everything is in a very bad point that we need to take care of it.  What we have done so far is pushed Covid into a corner and focusing on completely different things. Some people think that this wont happen to me because it didn't happen before. Like dude slap time.

One of the things i remember seeing was "Why should I wear a mask if its supposed to be effective for you" and teh reply was another words your saying that" i can drive drunk because you are supposed to be watching me for a crash."

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This passage makes us all think of what is going on today. This is the reality that we live in and sadly some people still aren't treating this virus as they should be. There are still far too many people who believe in "anti-mask". I honestly don't care about having a filter for these people, because they are endangering many lives. "Stupidity has a knack of getting its way"(Camus, 37)  I think that this passage also shows what some of these people might be thinking. They might not be thinking of the future like the passage suggests. However there are still people who don't do it just to not do it and in any case their arguments are invalid. This virus is truly terrifying and needs to be treated seriously.

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When I first read this part in the book, I found it quite similar to our situation right now with covid. We started out not caring about it as much when we should have, and that led to more spreading and deaths.

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After reading this section I made a lot of annotations on how this relates so our current events. Seeing how Camus shows the ignorance of the town and how people are refusing to acknowledge what is going on is very similar to how the United States reacted in the amidst of our pandemic. We see the unwillingness to wear masks, and the rejection of statistical data from scientists. The towns people are a representation of some of the people in the United States because they refuse to take pre caution and continue with their normal life and act like everything is ok.

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Freedom is a self-centered illusion. Outside forces limit one's freedom. One might pretend that force / limitation does not exist in order to feel free, but that is a self-centered way of viewing the world.

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-Seems to suggest this is an issue of ego (humanism being a school of thought in which humans are the most important beings, not some divine entity)
- However, this doesn't seem to completely align with humanism seeing as the defn of humanism mentions common interests of humans being an important pillar (isn't the health and well-being of humans a common interest?)
- Last sentence = no one is free???
- What does "rules out any future" mean?

- I think in January, February, and even March, we were all torn between conflicting fears and confidence

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This was kind of unbelievably similar to our actual, real-life situation. A rapid-spreading disease (such as coronavirus or the one in the book) are not exactly to be trifled with, and these people are doing exactly that. Additionally, there are those who don't actually pay attention or care, and those who care too little.

The part referencing freedom (at the end) rings surprisingly true as well, restricting everything that we as a society are normally able to do.

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This is scarily similar to what happened in March. Many people including doctors and otherwise very reasonable people, including myself, kinda didn't take COVID very seriously because the concept of living in the world we go right now where almost 100,000 new people are diagnosed with a deadly illness everyday and we can't go to school, and we can't hangout and all these things we had gotten so used to doing seemed crazy. It kinda makes sense until you remember that China and Italy were already going through this and it was clear it was serious but we still couldn't believe it would happen to us on that scale because it felt so far away.

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"Stupidity has a knack if getting it's way", is a relevant quote speaking of the current situations in (not limited to!) the US.  The similarities are uncanny; and what I thought was interesting is the term 'humanist'. By definition a humanist is a person who, "[has] a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity" (Dictionary.com), yet its ironic because they failed to protect themselves and their peers. It seems though, they took on a different 'twisted' notion of what it means to be humanist, they took it to business and travel, to drink and socialize. They fail to understand the concept of not having constant freedom, this is where they develop selfishness and self-centered attitudes.
~Chris C.

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"It is men who who away and humanists first of all, because they haven't taken precautions"(Camus 37).
- The idea of the pestilence being a bad dream, something that will pass in times to come, is highlighted in the towns people's(is that how you say that) response to the pandemic, and their consistent deflections or means of justifying inaction. They create the illusion of uncertainty to try and postpone the action they will inevitably need to take.
It's hard not to make connections to the real world, when many of the ideas present are so reminiscent of what we see in the real world, most notably the lack of personal and social responsibility.

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In fact, like our fellow citizen, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence.  When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid: it can’t last long.”  But thought a way may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting.  Stupidity has a knack of getting its way: as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.  A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.  But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions.  Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible.  They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views.  How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views.  They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.  

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In fact, like our fellow citizen, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence.  When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid: it can’t last long.”  But thought a way may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting.  Stupidity has a knack of getting its way: as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.  A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.  But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions.  Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible.  They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views.  How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views.  They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.  