Am I the Only One Who Needs Something WAY More Formidable to Justify the Collapse of Civilization?

I just need to get this out of my system...

Yesterday crushed me.

I learned that a local grief support organization was only providing in-person support to the “vaccinated.” If you are unlucky enough to lose a loved one and you haven’t had your shots, you can be consoled “virtually.”

“Our current policy is that to attend an in-person night of support, vaccination is required for all participants and volunteers over the age of 12, with health and religious exemption options.  We have been seeking guidance from CDC and other organizations to make the best decisions possible for our families.  We offer virtual options of grief support for all families to ensure everyone, regardless of vaccination status, can receive support.”

IMAGINE asking for proof of vaccination before you provide in-person support to a young person crippled by grief following the loss of a parent.

Imagine asking someone to prove that their refusal to get a medical intervention is based on a bonafide religious belief in order to receive grief support.

Imagine practicing medical discrimination despite the fact that these shots don’t stop transmission, don’t stop infection and don’t protect others.

I just can’t.

Are we really going to do this? Are we going to change the way we treat each other over this one malady that 99.8% can readily overcome?

We’re no longer in a pandemic. We have to live with COVID. Most of us have already had COVID-19 and everyone who wants the shots have gotten them. And many of them got COVID anyway.

The shots don’t work the way we hoped they would. They can’t protect others. They don’t last. You can still be hospitalized. You can still die of COVID. Even if you get 3 or 4 and wear a mask.

Are we really going to stop hugging and blame other people when we get sick? Are we actually expecting other people to get injections and sacrifice their way of life to make us feel safer? Are we’re now cool with treating children like disease carriers and making them afraid of air and holding hands? Are we going to make them risk getting myocarditis and possibly a shot at parenthood so they can go to college?

Are we really willing to replace immunity with vaccination status? (These aren’t true vaccines by the way). Are we just going to stand by silently while Fauci and other regulatory authorities swap out the science, change the definitions and move the bar?

And what happens when we have a disease that only 99.4% of people can overcome? Who else will we turn on then? Will we shun the smokers for polluting our air (while the factories continue to churn our smoke and toxic waste)? What about the people who refuse to buy electric cars? The people who use plastic bags? Because their selfishness will pollute the oceans and lead to climate change. Because their impact on the environment leads to more tick and mosquito-borne illness. What about people who have too many children, causing overpopulation and scarcity? What about people who eat too much and do too little? What about the people who vote for the wrong thing? And what shall we do with the people who spread the “misinformation” that leads to that vote?

Are we really going to stop taking responsibility for our own lives and make other people responsible for our health, our safety and our comfort? Everyone says they do it for others, but who are these others who would require that everyone around them - despite the instincts, beliefs, suffering and unique circumstances of others - make difficult, prolonged and potentially life-threatening sacrifices to maybe reduce their risk of getting this one virus even though we are all constantly exposed to thousands of other pathogens?

Do we plan to ignore all of the other suffering fellow human beings are experiencing while we thank government bureaucrat bullies for making our neighbors do what we want? How is it that we have rearranged society around fear, obedience and punishment and no one noticed?

How did we let strangers on screens convince us to turn on each other over this?

I have never met anyone who feels so personally vulnerable that they would ask the rest of the global population to override their own health and personal beliefs to accommodate them. But I know plenty of people who will happily engage in all kinds of generosity, self-sacrifice and problem-solving when presented with such vulnerability.

We can’t let COVID break humanity. Humanity is the thing we need to fight hardest to preserve… because it’s the origin of the compassion and creativity required to come up with a meaningful and hopeful solution.

And relative to other adversity, COVID isn’t even particularly threatening. Once we acknowledge and collectively grieve the price of our steep learning curves and the lives lost to medical mistakes and our failure to treat early, we can let go of some of the fear that gripped us early on. We know more. We can treat this. And Mother Nature seems to have helped us out even when human nature disappointed us. Let’s carry on with growing and evolving.

Besides, aren’t you even curious?  Look how creative they got between Zika and COVID-19.  At the very least, don’t you want to hold out for long enough to see what they’ll come up in the name of climate change?

Painting by Shen Rosen, 2022