I have not written in a long long time and I am disgruntled as Fuck. I am so so so angry. It is August 4th a year and a half into this pandemic. I have not written because I knew if I opened the flood gates I would not only piss off a bunch of people, I would find it hard to contain my discontent.
So here we are 21 months into this shit and still, the same group of people is responsible for the extent of this problem, keeping us here and continuing on the demise of the human race. Now if you are not vaccinated you can stop reading now if you like, you can unfriend me, block me, do what you must. The reality is you are to blame. You are the problem here. YES, if you are the unvaccinated, unmasked person you have a responsibility here and have failed our world and the human race. Sorry if this is a little harsh but frankly you are to blame!
When this started you cried about your right to not wear a mask. God forbid you should put a mask on your mouth and nose to block the intake and outgoing of a virus. God forbid you should take care of your fell person in the space with you. You decided that your right to spread disease and intake disease is more important than other people's health and life.
There is a concept in philosophy called the Categorical Imperative and it comes from Kantian Ethics. When you buckle up your seat belt you are obeying the categorical imperative. You may or may not agree that wearing a seat belt saves lives. You may or may not want a ticket. You may know people who have been injured or died because they were not wearing a seat belt. There are even some folks that may be been injured by the seat belt. The same argument can be made for airbags. Airbags may blow up in your face causing burns or other damage. However, they will stop you from bashing your fool head on the dashboard of your car. You follow these rules because they are for the greater good of the greater number of people. You are willing to sacrifice your comfort for the greater good.
So here we are with this virus ravishing our world. Now you may want to argue that the world has not been ravished. Maybe you don't 'know anyone who has died. Maybe you, by the grace of God or whatever powers that be, don't even know anyone who got seriously ill. Yet in the USA alone, at this point, we have had over 610,000 people die and over 4.2 Million worldwide. With an average daily case of 92,000 in the USA alone. Our little college town has a huge problem. We have had positive rates of 30% with higher rates of transmission than the city of Toronto with 5 million people.
I as an individual have lost friends, family and know 100's of people who have had it. I know people that lost parents, children, and lovers. I know people that are so damaged from this that 8 months after getting out of the hospital they are still on oxygen. I know people that have developed all sorts of related conditions post covid. This is not a joke. This is not the simple flu. This is not something to take chances with.
I now know 10's of people how have had breakthrough cases even after vaccination. While their chances of getting it are much lower and their chances of complications are also low this would not be happening at this rate if people had gotten vaccinated. There would be a lot fewer hosts of the virus and a lot less transmission. I fear we have missed our chance to control this by the arrogance of the people that will not get vaccinated. This makes me really furious and the next variant is mutating through this willing group of hosts as I type.
Others and I have lost their livelihoods to this. We spent five years building two businesses that have been devastated by this pandemic. People have lost their ability to work safely and have had to go to great lengths just to keep moving forward. Restaurants have closed, stores have gone out of business, people have lost their jobs to take care of kids learning virtually and overall it has been a shit show.
Then there are the kids that have lost their schooling. My oldest had not senior year in high school. Remember back to all those pivotal things that happened in your senior year of high school. OK erase them all. How does that feel? He was just getting some traction socially when the pandemic hit and he did not see anyone for 15 months. He is an introvert so he focused on online schooling and kicked butt. But he missed out on a lot. My youngest son missed out on middle school. Now as he says it 'No one finishes middle school and wishes they had more middle school.". But again think back to the pivotal things you learned about yourself, relationships, social functions, and life during those middle school years. Now he has to learn all that fast and furious in high school, assuming that can happen safely.
Then there are those that have lost their minds. Don't belittle this. People are not the same. They see others as infected, they don't know how to be in public again. They don't feel safe doing the simplest tasks of life. They can't get back to earning a real living because of fear and depression. Most people have felt this during this pandemic. They can't gather with friends and family. They morn those they lost and protectively shelter those they care about to a point of repression. This is not OK. This is not healthy and has been pretty much ignored.
Businesses forced employees to come back to work without any counseling or support for this transition. Unemployment was cut off by conservative ruled States to force people back into minimum wage jobs dealing directly with an unreliable public. The poor health care workers are all but used up. They are leaving the profession in droves, scared by what they have felt and seen. I have a friend that works in labor and delivery and has had to cut 10's of babies out of women's body on ventilators trying to save the babies as the mom's body shuts down. I have friends in nursing that have gone numb to the death, sadness, and deprivation they see every day. They are furious and have every right to be so.
I have not seen my family in almost 2 years. Yes, that is two years without hugging my aging parents, 2 years where they have continued to age without the joy of physically seeing my children. Two years of not seeing family for fear of killing vulnerable people. Two years where I could not even cross the border into the country of my birth because of the bad behavior of 50% of the American population.
Now one could say that fear is holding me back. That I could do all that I want if only I would let go of fear. However, I say it is my responsibility to the human race that holds me back. As I type this I am missing another networking event. The success of my business and our ability to earn a living hinges on networking, yet I can't do it. I can't go and be in a room with people enclosed. The reason I can't go is not that I will not wear a mask and do all the necessary things to protect myself, it is because I can not trust that the other people there will do their due diligence. I can't know who is vaccinated and who is running amuck.
Every day I find out about more people that are not vaccinated. Some have valid excuses about being sick and vulnerable and for those, I have some compassion. Many of the excuses however do not weigh the damage they are doing in their hesitance. By not getting vaccinated these people are leaving a place for the vaccine to fester, mutate and come back to get us all. They do not look at the big picture of what the right thing to do, for the common good of us all. The virus will have hosts to go to and will mutate. If they only wore masks when they were told to, if they only got vaccinated when they were told to, we would not be seeing the surge we are now. We would be able to travel safely, have family gatherings, bar mitzvahs, weddings, dinners, etc.
When our younger son got vaccinated we thought we were free. We thought we could go about our lives. Four about three weeks we celebrated, made plans, and even booked travel. Then the next surge it. We could continue to go about our lives but for some reason, we give a shit about spreading this virus to the arrogant unvaccinated people in our community. We don't want to get it, but even if we do the vaccine will help us not get it as bad. Yet we now curtail our lives again because of the same people that would not wear masks and arrogantly tell us they don't need to be vaccinated now. We curtail our lives to save yours. We curtail our activities to do our part in keeping this virus from mutating again and again and coming back and killing us all.
I had this discussion with a dear friend that will not get vaccinated. I told her this would cause a surge and that I prayed it did not come back to hurt more people. Yet, she remains unvaccinated and the world slips further into mayhem. We have no mask mandate, no restrictions on behavior, no mass testing, no persuasions, no occupancy limits, no travel restrictions, and no sense it would seem. How do you think this will progress? Even at the peak of the rules, we could hardly contain this thing and now we are the epicenter of the country.
So, this may not change your mind and frankly, you probably did not even read this far if you are not vaccinated. You probably chalked me up as one of those crazy liberal snowflakes. However, I am calling you out. You are the Problem. You are selfish, arrogant, and are responsible.
