Adventure: COVID Doesn’t Care

COVID doesn’t care if you are a vegan. COVID doesn’t care if the friends you invited over for dinner had the virus a year ago. COVID doesn’t care you don’t think they can get it again. COVID doesn’t care if there is no mask mandate. COVID doesn’t care if you only go inside for a few minutes. COVID doesn’t care if you are friends. COVID doesn’t care what your government says. COVID doesn’t care if you are healthy. COVID doesn’t care if you are young. COVID doesn’t care if you “never get sick.” COVID doesn’t care if you believe the virus is “just a cold.” COVID doesn’t care if you feel “life is back to normal.” COVID doesn’t care that “numbers are down.” COVID doesn’t care the testing centers are closed. COVID doesn’t care that this is “business as usual.” COVID doesn’t care if your trip got canceled. COVID doesn’t care the tradeshow you have to attend doesn’t require masks. COVID doesn’t care you had the window open. COVID doesn’t care you can be asymptomatic. COVID doesn’t care your mask was around your neck. COVID doesn’t care you are a professional athlete. COVID doesn’t care the concert was outside. COVID doesn’t care you thought the vaccine had a tracking device. COVID doesn’t care about borders. COVID doesn’t care about race. COVID doesn’t care you are a wellness instructor. COVID doesn’t care you do yoga. COVID doesn’t care you are a republican. COVID doesn’t care you are a democrat. COVID doesn’t care about the economy. COVID doesn’t care about the fiscal year. COVID doesn’t care about family ties. COVID doesn’t care you think it’s gone. COVID doesn’t care you love Jesus. COVID doesn’t care you don’t like wearing a mask. COVID doesn’t care you don’t believe it’s real.

COVID doesn’t care you will pass the virus–on average– to between seven and fourteen others.

I wrote this little note after hearing that two friends are on the way to the hospital with devastating COVID symptoms. Another has long COVID and hasn’t left her house in eighteen months. And no, she isn’t old with underlying symptoms. She is young, healthy and having trouble getting treatment. Four more friends have it and are riding it out.(sorry, now up to seven in last few hours) Some with light symptoms and others still sick after two weeks. Lots of lingering effects both physical and cognitive. But most importantly, I wrote this because I despise laziness and I despise dumb. I detest hearing untruths in regard to the virus. Untruths masked as fact to allow someone to live the life they want to live as opposed to the life that is best for all of us.

Most of my truly selfish friends got COVID early on. Nearly all denied getting it, denied the severity, and every single one, without fail, claimed to have never given it to anyone else. The pandemic, apparently, just materialized through OTHER people. Not them, no, never. It still feels like I am surrounded by the dumb, the arrogant and the ignorant. Planes with coughing people, long airport cues with not a mask in sight. How can we be this idiotic knowing what we ALREADY know?

My wife has a scar on a her side from having to wear a brace as a child. For one year, twenty-three hours a day. Through summer and winter. The scar is from jamming a ruler under the brace on hot days because the itch was so bad. Her mother said “She never complained, just did it.” I took three antibiotics, twice a day for two years. It killed everything in me, good and bad. It rotted my teeth. It ruined by digestive track. I did forty days in a row of hyperbaric oxygen treatment at “Lyme depth.” I took $1200 per shot, high-dose antibiotic shots in my hips that left baseball size welts. I never took a day off work. THESE things aren’t easy. Putting a mask on is a cake walk and yet we can’t be bothered.

COVID has been a mirror into the future of the planet. You talk climate change but can’t wear a mask? What happens when you ACTUALLY have to make a sacrifice? No water Wednesday? Is this an infringement of your civil liberties? And when I say “You,” I’m not referring to any one of you in particular. I’m referring to US. Me, you, everyone else. We failed here people. Sure, we had insane breakthroughs and incredible wins on certain levels but did you read the WHO report? We are less prepared now than before, we have zero money and resources set aside and our delicate public has “fatigued” from having to stay home.

What happens when COVID 23 arrives? Or something worse? I know that most people blog to gain something. Most people would never talk politics or religion or COVID because it certainly won’t help with numbers, traffic, views, etc. But I just don’t care. This is such a bizarre moment I can’t help but comment. It doesn’t help I’m rereading “Slaughterhouse Five.” Just today I read 114,000 new cases in the United States, but that number could be thirty times higher. Hospitalizations are up ten percent and deaths are up eighteen percent. And an hour ago I heard someone say “At least nobody is dying anymore and all the cases are mild.”

Yes, we live in a “post-truth” world now. I get it. That I could see coming from a long way off. But what I didn’t see was how many people would fall for it. How many people would stop educating themselves and go along with just about anything. The January 6th invaders were “tourists,” and COVID will just “magically disappear.” Or, why not drink bleach? Maybe it’s just a pretend world now. Pretend whatever you need, at the moment, then pretend something else later. I just heard Mitch McConnell say “The January 6th committee is showing Americans what they need to know.” What? First he said “This was an attempted overthrow of our government caused by president Trump,” then he said he never said that even though he’s on a hundred different clips being played again and again, and now he’s gone back again saying the committee is a good thing? I guess this is just another Tuesday. Might as well go get hammered and watch Netflix, again. (Actually precisely what I’m going to do.)

I spoke to a right wing friend the other day. Someone I’ve known for fifty three years. I asked if they knew about something. They said “Where are you hearing this?” I said “Take your pick of any credible news source anywhere in the world, they are all reporting the same thing.” “What’s a credible news source?” they asked. I supplied one. “I don’t watch that,” they replied. I gave another. “I don’t read that,” they said. “Okay,” I said. “Lets try this.” “Go to ANY major city in America and read their front page, ANY one from ANY state.” “I don’t read those,” they said. Then I began on foreign sources. “I don’t read any of those,” they said. And here lies the crux. Read what makes you feel good but leave the truth out of it. And this person then started complaining about the economy. You can’t make this up. And…wait for it….wait for it. This person got DELTA COVID because they were told the vaccine had a tracking device and wearing a mask would have no effect. (They were sick for four months.)

Look, I’m a completely flawed human being. Talk to anyone who knows me. I’m not arguing this at all. But you and I have to be better. We really do. You are not the enemy. The truth is not the enemy. Fact is not the enemy. Math is not the enemy. Science is not the enemy.

Stupidity is the enemy.