My reaction to the pandemic was intensely personal. I saw no reason to believe that I couldn\u2019t get the virus and no reason to believe that if I did get it I would survive.<\/p>\n
Not only was I frightened, I was furious at the incompetent and maliciously dangerous handling of this crisis. People like the criminal who occupied our White House for four years were actively trying to kill me and a lot of others.<\/p>\n
Some of them even said so, like Dan Patrick, the \u201clite gov\u201d (lite in all senses of the word) of Texas, who said people over 70 should die for the good of the economy, by which he meant Wall Street.<\/p>\n
Getting the vaccine made my personal fear go away. I no longer worry that I\u2019m going to end up dying alone in an ICU every time someone gets too close. I could feel the difference in my gut from the first shot.<\/p>\n
But it did nothing about my fury. So many people dead for no reason. People still dying even as the vaccine is becoming widely available because those in authority insist on opening things that should stay closed or performing hygiene theater instead of dealing with issues like indoor ventilation.<\/p>\n
I was never just angry on my own behalf. I was frightened on my own behalf, but I was angry on everybody\u2019s. We could have done so much better.<\/p>\n
Bad leadership was an obvious problem, but there\u2019s a deeper one. We seem to have lost any concept of taking care of ourselves as a public. <\/p>\n
This was obvious all along with the masks, when so many made a political statement of not wearing them (and spread the virus around in a number of super-spreader events).<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also obvious with the vaccines. People who are debating whether to get them are just thinking about themselves. I hear any number of people saying, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve always been healthy\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t like needles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The point of getting the vaccine is not just to protect yourself, grateful as I am for having the personal protection. It\u2019s to protect everybody. If everyone who can safely get the vaccine \u2013 there are people who can\u2019t \u2013 gets it, then this virus will have no place to go.<\/p>\n
Infectious disease has been a problem throughout human history. It is a not a problem that can by solved by private decisions. We all have to act in the interest of the community as a whole to protect us against very contagious diseases.<\/p>\n
That means getting vaccinated, following public health protocols, and so forth. It also means having a good public health system as well as funding for ongoing research and stockpiling the kind of equipment that is always necessary. Further, we have to make sure that the vaccine is available worldwide. Our community these days is a lot larger than our families and a few neighbors.<\/p>\n
This pandemic won’t be over until it’s over everywhere.<\/p>\n
Over three million people have died worldwide. There is a terrible surge in India right now. We\u2019re closing in on 570,000 deaths in the United States and that number is on the low side. Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020 after heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n
So many of those deaths could have been prevented. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever stop being angry about that. So many more are going to happen even as we’ve reached the point where we can protect people and where we really understand how to prevent it. That makes me even angrier.<\/p>\n
But right now in the United States you can do something to make this pandemic go away: Get vaccinated.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s save lives even while we\u2019re mourning so many lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My reaction to the pandemic was intensely personal. I saw no reason to believe that I couldn\u2019t get the virus and no reason to believe that if I did get it I would survive. Not only was I frightened, I was furious at the incompetent and maliciously dangerous handling of this crisis. People like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,17],"tags":[254],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","category-rants","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}