"Covidiot" (a portmanteau of the COVID-19 virus and the word idiot) is a disparaging term used to refer to people, most often young people in the Millennial and GenZ age brackets,[1] who choose to deliberately ignore current social and public health protocols involving dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.[2]
The term, which originated following news reports about young students on spring break in Florida who chose to party publicly despite recent warnings about the outbreak,[3] includes the refusal - often deliberate[4] - of such people to heed social distancing advisories to avoid potential spreading of COVID-19 from one person to another[5] and who, under the influence of the liberal media and its irresponsible panic-inducing, TDS-influenced and politically motivated fake news reports on the pandemic[6] as well as out of motivation by greed, selfishly engage in panic buying and hoarding of essential goods from supermarkets, drugstores and department stores to deny said goods to those who need them the most,[7][8] including the poor, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems who are most susceptible to COVID-19 or other diseases or illnesses. In addition, in spite of the recent public warnings against COVID-19, some of those same young people used those recent events as an excuse to create the newest idiotic online "challenge" craze (which they dubbed the "Coronavirus challenge", akin to the earlier Tide Pod challenge), where they posted cell phone camera video of themselves putting themselves at risk for catching the virus (or other diseases) by stupidly licking toilet seats and encouraging others who saw the videos to do likewise,[9] which led to widespread criticism and condemnation of their reckless behavior and stupidity on social media.[10]
Those young people who choose to ignore COVID-19 protocols and engage in such behavior tend to do so because, like many young people, they think they are invincible, think they have all the answers to everything and think the rules do not apply to them.[11] Such people also tend to be narcissists who care only about their own gratification and seeking attention and do not care how their self-centered behavior ends up negatively affecting other people or how bad it makes themselves look to the general public.
A notable non-Millennial example of the term covidiot coming into play recently is has-been Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano, who posted a photo on her Twitter account of herself with her husband and two children; in that photo, Milano is wearing a crocheted face mask, which she claims would "protect" her against being infected with COVID-19.[12] Predictably, she was roasted for her knit mask on Twitter, with thousands of posters pointing out that such a mask is useless against COVID-19 because of it being riddled with holes and also criticizing her for creating and wearing it as little more than a "woke" fashion statement and an act of virtue signalling.