New Heights of Human Stupidity?

'...a commodity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most common in the universe..."

~Michael Stackpole, I, Jedi~ 

I've been waiting decades to use that quote, thank you coronavirus!  I think we have reached an epochal moment in the history of human stupidity.  I was baffled by toilet paper shortages for a respiratory virus, but a story I heard yesterday makes that confusion almost sensible by comparison.  I live in cow country.  I have spent my entire adult life working with the critters professionally.  You can buy cattle vaccine at the local gas station/ranch supply along with your soda and cigarettes.  Yesterday I heard about someone shopping for cattle vaccine, not a strange occurrence this time of year.  We are in the middle of calving, cows and calves will need spring shots soon and there are certain vaccines recommended for baby calves.  But this fellow was eyeing a vaccine made for pregnant cows, given 6-8 weeks prior to calving, intended to build up the antibodies in the colostrum (first milk) to help protect the newborn calf from diarrhea (scours).  Nobody around here calves in June, that vaccine should have been given 2-3 months ago.  Worse, when the clerk asked how many head he had, the guy just smiled awkwardly and looked blankly at the salesperson, apparently he didn't know how many cows he had or maybe the clerk was speaking a foreign language as the guy didn't have even one cow.  But he wanted the big bottle (250 doses) rather than a smaller one, just in case he had more than 200 cows and wasn't aware of it?

He bought a bottle of bovine coronavirus vaccine and I really hope he doesn't try to use it on himself or administer it to others.  The least of his problems is that it won't do any good.  The bovine coronavirus has very little in common with the current human variety, it won't do squat to protect him from covid-19!  The real problem is that the vaccine reaction will be worse than an actual case of human coronavirus.  That is a nasty vaccine, at least from a human perspective, the cattle tolerate it fine but accidental (or intentional) human injections have severe side effects.  When I googled this topic, besides for a conspiracy theory currently circulating on social media, the other item that came up was a case report of a guy who lost his finger because he accidentally shot a dose of this vaccine into his hand.  I've done it personally (accidental), only a poke with a needle but no injection, but my whole hand swelled up and the pain was severe.  I know a guy whose whole leg swelled up because of an accidental injection.  It's not just coronavirus in that vaccine, and a couple of the other bugs are rather nasty, not to mention the oil base is inflammatory in its own right.  Please don't be stupid!

While this pandemic is bringing out the best in some, it also seems to be bringing out the worst in others!  I used to laugh at the sticker on cattle chutes that say 'not for use on people.'  But now I just wonder how we have survived this long as a species!