Hit the button and watch the camera pan. This is what willful stupidity looks like. This is what self-destruction looks like. This is what America looks like, circa 2022.
Two people I know have husbands in the ICU. One is being taken off the vent today, and the other will be if there’s no improvement in the next few days. Neither were vaccinated.
I didn’t realize I could feel sadness and apathy for someone at the same time.
— Tuff Tiff Resists (@TuffTiffResists) January 23, 2022
I am particularly moved by this phenomenon of self-destruction because of the fact that it hit home a few days ago. A friend called me to wish me a happy birthday. In the course of the conversation I asked her if she had gotten the booster shot yet. She muttered something I didn’t understand and so I asked her again. I said, “Did you have all three shots? Are you fully vaccinated now?”
She said, “I can’t lie to you. I haven’t had any shots.” I almost fell off the couch.
Long story short, this is an old friend of mine from a church we once both attended but which has now dissolved. I’ll call her “Sue.” Sue has become an anti-vaxxer. Her husband is a conspiracy theorist (and these are the words she uses to describe him) and he believes that the vaccine will kill you. He also believes that the earth is flat and the moon landing never happened, nor the holocaust, and you know the roster of idiotic ideas as well as I do.
Sue does not cosign on his wilder conspiracy theories but somehow she got drawn into this one. She told me what a monster Anthony Fauci was, “killing dogs.” I said, “I’m aware of a photoshopped video claiming that. And I also wrote a piece on it which quoted a columnist at the Washington Post who fact checked and debunked all of the puppy torture rumors.” She also mentioned Dr. Fauci “making billions” and that is what that creep Roger Marshall was trying to push in the Senate a few days ago, that Fauci is becoming mega wealthy off of his evil doings with COVID. And of course you have all seen the placards where Fauci is made to look like Hitler and blamed for the death of millions. This is some sick stuff.
So I told Sue about this and I begged her to exercise common sense. She told me that her two daughters, in their twenties, got vaxxed and that “there is a fight in this household every single day about this subject.” I said, “Consider yourself blessed that your children have enough sense to take care of themselves even if your husband doesn’t and that they care about you and want to see you safe as well.”
In any event, when I saw the footage of this anti-vaxx demonstration in Washington, D.C., this all replayed in my mind again. Sue is a perfectly reasonable, hard working middle class person. She sells real estate. She has three kids and a house with a pool in Southern California. She attends church and does charitable deeds. I would color her normal, above average in fact, in every way except for this anti-vaxx madness and madness is what it is. I wonder if Joe Biden looked out the window today and said, “My God, I’m the care taker for an open air lunatic asylum,” because he would have been correct in reaching that conclusion.
I hope I don’t lose my friend. I truly do. But I know enough about life at this point to know that I can’t make anybody else’s decisions for them, even if doing so would save them from an awful death. All that I can ever do is share what I know. That’s all any of us can do.
True Reality-My brother was denied the care he needed for a non-COVID illness, he died.
They were just too short handed to care for him because of non-vaccinated COVID patients.— I Still Wear A Mask-Consideration & Compassion (@dragonfire55555) January 23, 2022
This is where it affects all of us. It has crossed my mind that I wouldn’t want to have to go to an ER right now. The medical system is swamped and I don’t see that improving, with this idiocy going on. So I have a heart attack, God forbid, or something unexpected, I guess I take my chances.
I didn’t add to my friend’s composure the other night, but I don’t know if I persuaded her, either. It was a sad conversation. But this is the new abnormal in this country, friend against friend, brother against brother, a complete free for all. I think in her case, the issue is that she will have to defy her husband, who is an idiot and I told her that, and side with her daughters if she gets vaxxed and she doesn’t want to have to make that “choice” even if it means saving her own life. That’s how crazy this has gotten. The dysfunctionalism in this particular family may end up killing one or more of them.
Here’s what I see. pic.twitter.com/cL3W9b4XbD
— Jon M Nordquist (@slomoshun1966) January 23, 2022
It’s ironic, that America, a country known for its advances in science, should end up being the land of anti-science superstition.
And as a bonus, look at this. I remember the Summer of Love, 1968 and whatever this is, it ain’t that.
Musical entertainment at the anti-vax rally in DC. From @FordFischer pic.twitter.com/Q1Jpsd16bJ
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 23, 2022
The media is the biggest problem in this country.
Spreading lies and misinformation about the whole covid experience. About 80% of the people i know in the hospital have the vaccine.
Some of the media does – and that’s the stuff these people get their information from. The rest have better coverage.
Um, are those people that you “know” who are “in the hospital” in there for COVID or are they there for OTHER reasons? You *conveniently* fail to elaborate on that point. As I’m reading it, you’re implying that the alleged 80% of people you know in the hospital are there for COVID-related issues and that they’ve been vaccinated.
That you still have enough of a heart to feel for your friend speaks well of you, Ursula. Me? At this point, I’ve come to accept the slow-motion mass suicide that’s still ongoing. I see less of a case spike and more of a death spike, all in the usual places, including here in TN.
Bear in mind that’s just the deaths from COVID itself. Many of the survivors will have their system weakened to the point where something else kills them. May be just as something as simple as despair that takes them out. What a waste of a life’s work.
I told my friend that she could become a long hauler. I don’t think she had even heard of that before. She’s an incredibly kind person. I would hate to see anything happen to her, but I can’t make her decisions for her. I told her that her husband was full of it (not for the first time, I might add) and she needed to take care of herself. I guess the two girls, who are vaxxed, beg her to get vaxxed as well
I guess we’ll see what happens. She turned 58 not so long ago and maybe she will end up crippled and weakened like so many.
There should be a special circle in Hell for people who lie about COVID.
Dante had such a circle in Inferno, the Malebolge. It had several sub-circles, including those for liars and frauds. No doubt that would be the COVID liars’ destination of choice in such a cosmology.
Just last week, a close friend felt “a ton of bricks” on his chest. He had to wait 3 days in a hospital hallway before he had a double heart by-pass. The hospital was overwhelmed with unvaccinated idiots sick with Covid. He nearly died. So many selfish, stupid people!
Back in November, before all the Omicron hoopla, I spent 30 hours in the ER, 30 hours – with a newly diagnosed heart condition. I live in terror now (between that and the already present COPD) of having to go to the hospital for anything. Of course the stress does NOT help. I am very high risk and right now trying to time a second booster. I am so sorry for what your friend went through. I fortunately had no urgent surgery but that could well be coming up. I think the unvaccinated should all go to the back of the line.
We no longer are in the position to coddle people who are willfully ignoring facts & killing people. My dad was a violent drunk. He was confronted repeatedly by his oldest son,(me), time after time. Sometimes it resulted in a beating. I didn’t cut him any slack. I told other people in church. I didn’t minimize, lie, or live in denial. I loved my dad, & was often helped by him when sober. A true dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Point is the truth is the damn truth was required, & protecting his feelings was not helpful. Eventually he pushed the envelope & my mom shot him with his own gun. This is not a time to massage the feelings of the willful self righteous ignorant killers. Time to phucking grow up.
I agree with you Scott. I am just not sure how we could pierce the veil of their chosen misinformation that they truly believe. You would think the reality of close loved ones being hospitalized, ventilated and dying would be enough for them to wake up. Sadly often, it doesn’t seem to be enough.
Some, ( a very small percentage ), people have underlying problems that eliminate their ability to tolerate the vaccination process and face certain problems if they do take the vaccinations … Stupidity and just plain idiocy are NOT valid reasons to avoid the vaccinations …
A public display of these moronic nay-sayers should bar them from any hospital for treatment of their eventual symptoms … they should be shipped to various tent cities for final treatments, with crematory facilities … crude and bizarre statement, but it is what they are doing to the general population’s health and security that earns them special options in the final game …
I’m going on a series of radiation treatments myself, thankfully, at a cancer specialty center, attached to a hospital, but with their own parking lot and entrance doors …
The records show most of 2000 people are dying every day here in the United states from Covid-19 … it is at once sad and hard to imagine monthly totals not considered by these demonstrators as a result of NOT getting vaccinated …
And when you suggest that anti-vaxxing can go to the end of the line because their choice not to vaccinate caused their illness, the response is always, “Then the obese people,the diabetics, the people with heart disease, the smokers made a choice that caused their illnesses,so they should go to the end of the line too.”
Pointing out that smokers,,obese people et al don’t harm anyone but themselves –you don’t catch a heart attack or gain weight when an obese person sits next to you– while an asymptomatic person with Covid could infect every person they come in contact with. One only affects the sufferer; the other is a highly infectious lethal.illnes. They refuse to grasp.that comparing the two isn’t close to.comparing apples,and oranges–more like comparing apples and cannon balls.