As I wrote this post, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, 4,264,652 people have died worldwide in this horrific pandemic, and 615,276 of those were in the US. Those numbers are even higher by the time you are reading this, and they most likely only represent the tip of a very huge iceberg, because some places are better at reporting than others.
It’s hard to wrap one’s brain around a number that’s up in the millions, but imagine this: If each of those people were buried in a standard sized coffin, and you lined them up end to end, you’d have a line of coffins that would stretch from Seattle, Washington to Cochabamba, Bolivia. As the vulture flies. If you drove 10 hours a day at the rate of 50 miles per hour, it would take you more than 11 days to get past that line of coffins. And that isn’t even allowing for bathroom breaks or stop signs.
I say this because I really want you to understand that that’s a lot. A whole lot. And so much of it could have been prevented. But we chose to politicize it instead.
Public Health should be considered a basic human right by all of us. It has nothing to do with your freedom to not wear a mask or your right not to be vaccinated. It’s about being a responsible human being on the planet earth.
If COVID-19 weren’t transmittable from one human to another, and you wanted to dive headfirst into a fetid pool of the stuff, I’d say have at it. I’d even provide you with the rubber duckie. You do have every right to be as stupid as you want to be. But in the case of COVID, you’d be diving headfirst into that pool and a long line of people, some who are less capable of swimming, some who don’t want to even get wet, some who have more important things to do with their time, would be tied to you against their will. You’re just yanking them in with you.
How dare you? Seriously. Explain it to me, because I don’t understand.
There are some basic health rules that everyone on the planet does their best to follow. For example, when is the last time you defecated on the turkey at your family’s Thanksgiving Day gathering? I’m guessing never. Because you’re not an animal. You’re civilized.
Aren’t you?
Health issues should not be mixed with politics, but they have been. As a result of that, I could go on and on with statistics that show that the more red the state or country, the more people have died of COVID, but you don’t want to hear me, do you? You just want to prove that you’re free.
It seems awfully self-destructive to want to be free to die a horrible death. That doesn’t bode well for the life of your political party. If it were only people who agreed with you politically who were dying off, then I wouldn’t be so upset. You all would have volunteered for it. But there are people out there who are dying without having made that choice. There are people dying who have tried to do everything to save themselves, and yet they have the misfortune of bumping into some idiot who wants to be “free”. It’s just not right.
And this is not the first time that the far right has not cared whether people live or die, and it won’t be the last. That’s what’s so truly terrifying about them. Their lack of caring even for their own.
If you read a very upsetting story that I wrote back in 2014, entitled How the Republicans Helped Kill My Boyfriend, you’ll notice a disturbing similar pattern. All I’m saying is that you may want to consider saving yourselves instead of trying to make some point. You can just think of the side benefit of saving humanity as an extra little perk.
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