Skip to main content

This Virus Is Still Really Bad

 I checked the COVID cases and deaths this morning. Over 2,200 people already, dead. I hear people saying that we're overreacting, that somehow, we're "living in fear." I just have to suppose that some folks cannot handle "9-11" nearly every day. What mental gymnastics do you have to do, to persuade yourself that it's "no big deal"?

I've had 3 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, so I'm not overly concerned about being harmed personally. What I did, I did partly for others. I've lost a lot of friends and loved ones in this life, and suddenly. Death comes for us; it is our fate in this world, we could say. I don't understand why we would want to bring it more quickly, and for no sensible reason.

A lot of my friends and family are just stubborn, gullible, or some combination of both, I guess. If that offends you, good. I'm over 40; if people's love for me is conditional at this point, I don't need them. We won't be here forever; we don't have time to lie to each other about important things, for the sake of politeness.

I have to assume that I've been among the especially vulnerable this entire time. I used to fancy myself ever and always just an individual, but I think about myself as part of the community of the severely disabled now. If friends and family of the vulnerable ask me to wear a mask to keep them safe, no problem. If they don't want to associate in person with the unvaccinated, I get it.

People will say that it's easy for me to "virtue signal" and hide in my house. Well, as long as I'm guilt-tripping people, you haven't made a society too easy for me and others to live in, anyway. A lot of people have been bound by the selfishness of others our entire lives. One doesn't realize how much anger one has about this, until one tries to live normally, and meets the peculiar roadblocks of "otherness."

I have no mandates to impose, beyond my obvious disapproval of selfish and ignorant choices. Maybe people even know they're being foolish, because they compare something barely more onerous than the obligation to have car insurance to the most vicious tyrannies in human history.

Funny thing: We never seem to tell these melodramatic serial exaggerators to stop "living in fear."

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Thoughts On The Harrison Butker Commencement Speech

Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Alyse

 Today, you’re 35. Or at least you would be, in this place. You probably know this, but we’re OK. Not great, but OK. We know you wouldn’t want us moping around and weeping all the time. We try not to. Actually, I guess part of the problem is that you didn’t know how much we loved you. And that you didn’t know how to love yourself. I hope you have gotten to Love by now. Not a place, but fills everything in every way. I’m not Him, but he probably said, “Dear daughter/sister, you have been terribly hard on yourself. Rest now, and be at peace.” Anyway, teaching is going well, and I tell the kids all about you. They all say you are pretty. I usually can keep the boys from saying something gross for a few seconds. Mom and I are going to the game tonight. And like 6 more times, before I go back to South Carolina. I have seen Nicky twice, but I myself haven’t seen your younger kids. Bob took pictures of the day we said goodbye, and we did a family picture at the Abbey. I literally almost a...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

 I once had a friend, a dear friend, who helped me with personal care needs in college. Reformed Presbyterian to the core. When I was a Reformed Presbyterian, I visited their church many times. We were close. I still consider his siblings my friends. (And siblings in the Lord.) Nevertheless, when I began to consider the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded, he took me out to breakfast. He implied--but never quite stated--that we would not be brothers, if I sought full communion with the Catholic Church. That came true; a couple years later, I called him on his birthday, as I'd done every year for close to ten of them. He didn't recognize my number, and it was the most strained, awkward phone call I have ever had. We haven't spoken since. We were close enough that I attended the rehearsal dinner for his wedding. His wife's uncle is a Catholic priest. I remember reading a blog post of theirs, that early in their relationship, she told him of the p...
Post a Comment
Read more