Here we are, still living through this damn zombie movie. Only the zombies aren’t the living dead; they’re the incompetent braindead in living bodies, jerkily animated by their own impervious wants, sightless and hollowed out, incapable of self-preservation yet wreakers of havoc and destruction on others. It took just one zombie on the Baltimore Ravens who neglected to cover his nose and mouth with a mask to thereby wreck his own team, and with a ripple effect of infection plunge the NFL into organizational chaos.
They’re easy to spot, zombies: They’re the un-sentient, disconnected husks who walk around breathing potential hell on their colleagues and neighbors. They lurch clumsily into the midst of crowded rooms with their masks either missing or dragging around their chins, spreading their odorless danger mercilessly as they shout. Steve Saunders, strength coach of the Ravens? Clearly a zombie. Denver Broncos quarterbacks Drew Lock, Blake Bortles, Brett Rypien and Jeff Driskel are a whole cohort of zombies, mobile in body but empty-skulled, lax and evidently less than cooperative about their contacts. See, one thing about zombies is that they are not just unthinking. They are aggressively unthinking.
The thing to do when you see a zombie is scream — scream their names out loud. It’s unclear whether this can stop a zombie, because they are such inherently sightless, deaf, selfish and oblivious organisms: Saunders reportedly went to work with symptoms and left fevered handprints all over the Ravens’ facility, and now the infections are at 30 people, from quarterback Lamar Jackson to a nutritionist. Perhaps loud public shaming might at least give the zombies pause, long enough for folks to run in the other direction.
