Unvaccinated Loved Ones & The Comeback of COVID

Mentally preparing to bury your loved ones is no easy task.  

After an absolutely atrocious 2020, America breathed a collective sigh of relief during the Summer of 2021 as COVID cases took a steep nosedive.  For a few sweet weeks there were NO new cases per day in my state, prompting me to go maskless in public a couple times after receiving my vaccine.  June was a dream; the 4th of July was a blast.  People were getting vaccinated by the hundreds even in rural backwoods pockets of the country including my most conspiracy-prone family members.  Well, most of them.  All but the ones I live with that is.  I knew the good times wouldn't last but I had no idea how fast cases would come rocketing back up.

Now we're heading into Fall 2021 and my closest loved ones are still not vaccinated.  That familiar feeling of dread is creeping back in as I watch the situation worsen around the country.  Case numbers are suddenly back at their October 2020 levels and it's only mid-July.  This does not bode well for the rest of the year, especially considering school hasn't even started yet.  (If you know anything about respiratory viruses, you'll know they spread fastest in the cold months when everyone is indoors under the recirculated, dry air of heaters).  The Delta variant is a beast, more contagious than the previous strains and apparently more harmful to younger people.  Add the fact that people are absolutely OVER mask-wearing & you have a recipe for disaster.  The CDC & WHO are giving conflicting mask advice, with the former telling us back in May that vaccinated people could remove masks indoors while the latter says 'not so fast' with the Delta variant about.  Fauci's email leak seems to have fueled the right's pre-existing hatred and distrust of him (to put it mildly) while social media sites like Facebook & Youtube continue allowing users to spread disinformation like wildfire.  You can see where this is going.  Nowhere good.  

The facts are plain:  99.5% of the people currently dying of COVID are unvaccinated.  Vaccines work to prevent severe illness and death.  This is wonderful news & we should be so grateful to have a choice between life & death (those of us who are eligible to receive the vaccine, of course).  This choice requires no major sacrifice on your part; you aren't being drafted into a war or being asked to forego basic necessities or comforts.  Previous generations lined up without question for their polio, smallpox & other vaccines even when vaccination itself was a new technology.  Now self-styled internet researchers claim this one particular shot is "too new & untested" to be trusted even as people around them die of a novel virus that's more contagious than smallpox.  It's clear that the American public education system failed to teach risk-benefit assessment.  All medical interventions carry inherent risk, but holy shit you guys.  Compared to the risk of long COVID or dying alone on a ventilator?  It's not even a close call.

Delta variant = more contagious than smallpox

Who's On First?

So who the FUCK is running this shitshow behind the scenes?  Is anyone even in charge of public relations at the White House, or is it all fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants chaos?  It's clear that, despite his expertise & years of experience in immunology, Fauci is too polarizing at this point to be taken seriously.  One need only look at any comment section under a video of the man to see that.  The number of laugh reacts & snide remarks rival that of any Trump video.  People aren't taking his advice about the virus seriously and that's hurting all of us.  He needs to step aside & let others do the talking.  I'm sure there are plenty of other experts who'd be willing to step into the role.  Quite honestly he should be investigated for his role in promoting gain-of-function studies after this is all over; for now we must focus on the crisis around us.

As for what's going on at the CDC, something is severely amiss.  Their focus on reopening the economy & putting capitalism above human life has been apparent for a while but especially since Trump took office.  Maybe longer.  There was pushback against their "ditch the mask indoors" guideline when they said it but now that the WHO is saying the exact opposite, it's even clearer they're in the wrong.  And maybe worst of all, President Biden of the "I follow the science" fame, still hasn't issued a nationwide mask mandate or given any indication that he's prepared to put the nation on lockdown as needed if things get as bad as they were last year.  His presidency is basically Trump 2.0 without the mass protests, which is exactly what leftists were afraid of.  Liberal democrats are asleep at the wheel, still living out their "lock him up" delusion about Trump who has been out of office for half a year now.  

The CDC has been off-base since Day 1 of the pandemic.

Never mind the fact that the only reason Biden won was because Trump killed off his loyal voter base in the 65+ white demographic by holding maskless rallies in the freezing cold & discouraging COVID safety measures.  500,000 dead in a year:  you better believe a good chunk of them were Trump voters.  But liberals are acting like they've achieved something monumental with their Biden win.  Look around!  No $15 minimum wage, no universal healthcare, no UBI, no "Day 1" promised $2,000 stimulus check, no student debt forgiveness, no public option.  The border situation is worse than when Trump was in office--more kids in cages now & a promise by Biden to continue construction of the border wall.  VP Harris, a child of immigrants herself, told immigrants to "turn around" and not attempt to enter the country which sounds like something Orangeman himself would say.  Despite his inability to scrounge together the coins to feed homeless, starving Americans, Biden bombed Syria within his first 100 days in office--a feat that costs untold billions.  

These are the cold hard facts.  How you feel about them is up to you.  But in my opinion it doesn't bode well for our chances of handling COVID's comeback in 2021 and beyond.  The vaccine is a wonderful tool but it's not a panacea, particularly if only half or less of the population is vaccinated.  And if the federal government is unwilling to temporarily shut businesses & schools as needed to protect our most vulnerable--children who literally can't be vaccinated & are now vulnerable to severe illness from the Delta variant--how exactly is that better than Trump?  Once again, we could learn so much from countries like New Zealand & Finland (which happen to be lead by women)--they've handled this COVID mess so much better than our stubborn old greedy leaders.  

UPDATE:  I finally convinced my most fearful, stubborn relative to get vaccinated.  I did so by sending her a slow trickle of carefully curated information from apolitical sources like the WHO, CDC & Mayo Clinic between periods of total "cold shoulder" silence.  When asked why I was being so short, I explained that I was preparing mentally for the possibility of burying both my parents before 2022.  Combined with seeing actual (unvaccinated) people we know be hospitalized left & right with severe COVID, this tactic convinced her to get the jab despite the constant flood of pseudoscience & conspiracy nonsense on her Facebook feed from everyone she grew up with.  Moral of the story:  It is possible to reach people on this life-or-death issue if you're persistent.  And if you can't, you may just have to "mentally bury" them now so it doesn't hurt as much when the time actually comes.  #Boundaries