My frustration, anger grow

 

I'm posting this picture for a reason. There are so many aggravating things about this image (found floating around on social media) that I felt I had to respond. It encapsulates all the frustration and anger I have inside of me as we muddle our way through this fourth – and perhaps most dangerous yet – iteration of the Covid-19 virus.

Wait. What? The fourth iteration? What, are we stupid or something? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? 620,000 dead. Do we need a fifth iteration and even more deaths to knock some sense into our heads? What more proof is needed?

Kim said to be careful, because the image could be a fake. Or professionally posed. And she may have a point. But even if it's all of that, the photo still illustrates my position.

So here goes.

If the image is fake, then it's meant to further divide us. This would also suggest the presence of foreign influences, like Russia or China, who are reaping easy dividends off our internally warring and conflicted tribes and rattling our democracy. The very fact that this image came off an unregulated social media also compounds the issue. What is a lie and what is the truth?

But I'm assuming the image is real. The background is flat and scrubby, which suggests a southern red state like Florida, or Texas, or even Arizona, where anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers are royally screwing things up for the rest of us while killing themselves. And us.

The woman is wearing scrubs, suggesting she is a healthcare worker. Her sign hints that she is proud that she is not vaccinated, but that while she is in the medical field, she doesn't care if she might be asymptomatic. She has no way of knowing if she is carrying the virus and passing it on to someone else. Like a child. Or an elder. Or a colleague. And if that's true, she is not smart. She should be fired.

Where is her empathy? Where is her morality?

Why is she smiling? Does she enjoy working in a place where patients are overloading the system, raising the cost of health care? So even if she is helping, she is not helping. She's a hypocrite. Great picture.

Asking that her choices not be mandated makes her protest political. She no doubt thinks her freedoms are being compromised by government mandates (like seat belts, right?). In fact, the key word in her protest – "I" – actually unveils her irresponsibility. Covid-19 is a nationwide – no, a global – healthcare emergency, and therefore requires a national (and global) response, such as masking and taking the vaccine. Individual freedoms also require a responsibility to the greater good of the whole – the "We," if you will, as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

We are where we are right now because the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers have given the original Alpha variant enough time to mutate into the current Delta variant. Which begs the question, how far away are we from the Lambda variant and perhaps a total resistance to the vaccine? Already, breakthrough infections are occurring at an unnerving pace. School is about to start and children under 12 are not eligible for the vaccine – yet. But they can catch the virus and give it to somebody else.

If something isn't done soon, look for a resumption of lock downs and mandates. If that happens, we have nobody to blame but ourselves – and the unvaccinated.

The current rate of death and suffering are, to me, the result of unbridled selfishness, not a misplaced sense of patriotism.

So this is how I feel. We are in a very, very strange and dangerous place these days.