Sudden cardiac arrest has become one of the leading causes of death in the United States. According to the American Heart Association, more than 350,000 out-of-hospital heart attacks occur each year in the nation. Out of these 350,000 cases, 70% happen in homes, and only 32% of victims receive the immediate help needed before professionals arrive at the scene, resulting in a survival rate of less than 6%. Because of this, there is increasing support for free and mandatory CPR training, as this could significantly raise the number of survivors from sudden cardiac arrest.

However, this is just an awful, awful idea. It’s probably the worst idea that has ever come to humankind. This would just be like forcing people to be conscious of where they toss their paper – it’s simply too much effort to remember to put paper in the recycling bin rather than the trash can. Having mandatory CPR training would be as ridiculous as holding the door open for the person behind you – why would anyone physically exhaust themselves by leaving their arm up to prop the door open when they could just walk away and go about their day? Sure, CPR might one day save a life, but who knows if they will ever be in a situation where they might need to use it? Is it really worth the expenditure of time and concentration to learn it?
           

Learning how to perform CPR is just too time-consuming. To become CPR certified, one must attend a three-hour class. Three hours. That’s one-eighth of a day. That’s three too many hours wasted on learning how to perform such a worthless method. Instead of understanding the life-saving procedure, people could be doing much more fun things with their time, such as binge-watching Netflix or sitting at home playing video games. Going to a class to learn how to save someone’s life rather than lying in my bed doing nothing and enjoying myself all day? No way.

There’s nothing even difficult about performing CPR, so why would anyone spend all that time taking a class? All one must do is push on someone’s body to get their heart pumping again. Easy! There’s absolutely no risk of doing this stuff wrong. Trust me, I saw it in a YouTube tutorial. I once helped this man who fell to the ground from a heart attack by slamming my fist into his stomach. Moments later, the paramedics arrived and rushed him to the hospital. I later found out that he was suffering from a suspicious abdominal bleed, but he survived the heart attack. It is a good thing I was around to help, or he probably would have died.

Performing CPR on someone is just a one-sided version of wrestling. One person is on top of the other, pressing down on the other’s chest at a constant pace with an exhausting amount of pressure. But this version of the sport is extremely unfair, as only one person is allowed to put any physical force on the other, so there really isn’t any point to doing this. I mean, you could learn how to perform CPR just to save someone’s life, but what’s the point if the game is structured so unfairly? It is definitely not worth anyone’s time. Even if someone comes along, drops to the ground, and stops breathing, as if they were taunting you to wrestle them, it wouldn’t be worth the effort to know CPR to save their life.

However, the moment that stranger becomes a family member, life wouldn’t feel like a game anymore, would it?
Having the ability to increase someone’s chance of survival from one of the leading causes of death in the nation is right at our fingertips. All people need to do is simply sign up for a three-hour class to have the proper skills to perform life-saving CPR. However, this isn’t happening, as people are too lazy and don’t see the significance in learning such a skill. By implementing free and mandatory CPR training in the high school curriculum across the nation, we could easily combat these problems.