Difficult
It's very difficult to live.
We are entering year 3 of a global pandemic, and COVID-19 is surging again. I've heard the new variant is not as strong as previous ones, which might indicate the virus is weakening. It also might indicate that vaccines are working. The experts seems to agree that we will never reach herd immunity in the United States.
There does not seem to be any logic to the reasoning of people refusing the vaccine. If they are old, there is even less logic; these are folks who took a vaccine on a sugar cube IN SCHOOL back in the day. Government mandates for vaccines are not new; anyone who has attended a public school in the United States in the past 70 years has had to produce vaccination records to register. (I don't know the actual number of years, but requiring vaccines for public schools has been around for my entire lifetime, and I'm only 52.)
”I don't know what's in the vaccine." Do you know every ingredient in the syrup used in the coffee shop latte you are drinking?
"My body, my choice." Last I checked, abortion isn't contagious. Also, you can't use that phrase in order to have the freedom to infect others. ALSO, until all pregnant people have full agency, you can't use that phrase. You can't. It's not yours to use. It sets up a false equivalence between something you don't like and something that can kill a stranger's family member.
"It's a government conspiracy; it's a hoax." No, it is not.
No. It is not.
I vacillate between my resolve being strengthened by idiocy and madness, and my resolve being completely eradicated on another day, giving up, why does anything matter at all, at all. Anything at all?
(A peach sounds good right now.)
I know my platform, such as it is, is more like a tiny soapbox, upon which I'm standing, shaking my fist. So be it. Here I stand, proclaming:
Get vaccinated. Wear your mask OVER your nose and mouth, and stop standing so goddamned close to me.
We could be so close to ending this. Existence is madness right now. All is folly.
My family and my home are everything right now. Not much else matters.