EDITORIAL - Preparedness, not curtailment, is key to celebrations

Virtually all news organizations — newspapers, radio and television — ran figures of the dead and injured as a result of revelry during the holidays. Most of them gave emphasis to whether the figures were higher or lower that the previous years.

Actually, it does not matter one bit whether the figures are higher or lower. The main thing is that there will always be figures to count and there is nothing anyone can do to wipe them out.

Revelry is always part of the celebrations associated with the holidays. It is less of a safety thing than a cultural one. The urge to do what one is almost expected to do as a result of being who he is will always prevail over concerns for one’s safety.

Besides, nobody who got hurt got hurt on purpose. All the deaths and injuries were the results of accidents. And they are precisely called accidents because nobody thought they would happen.

Not that government or anyone should just give up and stand aside while people kill or main themselves through recklessness in their celebrations. But the point is, it is pointless to discourage something that is part of who people are.

The more celebrations are restricted, the more people will be driven to employ illegal means to celebrate. Government simply does not have the resources to do a man-for-man monitoring of everyone.

One can almost cry at that pathetic attempt to introduce recorded noise as a substitute for actual explosions. Take the case of music. Nothing beats the quality of recorded music. But nothing beats the high of a concert, never mind if the screams drown out the singers.

So, instead of trying to dampen the celebration, government should focus more on having every means necessary to deal with the consequences of too much folly or exuberance. It must be prepared to deal with accidents that it knows will surely come, whether it likes it or not.