Compassion Overload

I'm getting so tired of it. When there were no alternatives, or at least unknown alternatives besides quarantining at home or masking up, washing hands for 20 seconds, I had abundant compassion for those suffering from covid, or the families of those who became ill. I still feel for a friend with a son who's a long-hauler and for whom there is no known hope for any recovery. Just a machine prolonging survival, such as it is. It's just a matter of time now, and I ache for them.

But we've had vaccines now for over 6 months. Not only were they well tested, using well-proven technology in their development, but over the last few months were getting approved for younger people and more widely available than they were being used. And that is where the hiccup in my compassion level dug in -the not being used part.

I do still worry about young children, and for those immunosuppressed who still can't take the vaccines. However....

For those with eyes to read and ears to hear, the news has been out for a while now what the consequences of covid are, how much worse in terms of both contagion and lethality the Delta variant is, how young its victims can be. It's well known to be here. News is full of warnings, of pleas for assistance in those areas where vaccinations have been widely refused. We have known for a while how effective the existing vaccines are against even this variant. But people refuse to believe. Refuse to act. Fear a needle poke or a possible day of feeling sick. Believe they'll be "turning into a magnet" or "getting microchipped" or whatever the latest nonsense is.

Now that they're finding out the hard way the truth of what we've been warning them about, they want our help. They need ventilators. Repiratory therapists. More hospital spaces. And of course we as a nation are doing our best to respond. I just find it harder to care about them this time around. Just like I find it harder to care about the shooter dying when they turn their gun on a crowd and finally on themselves. It's not a private choice for those shot, just like covid isn't a private choice for those unwittingly infected by those around them. Particularly for those who get infected by those in defiance of the science and somehow believing they have some magic protection that will keep them from dying of the "hoax", or can somehow live through it just fine, thank you, and never consider that those around them can be affected by these actions. Or lack of actions.

It's called public health for a reason. Viruses are contagious. Often it's by something as simple as breathing somebody else's air, or touching where another has touched. The contagious aspects of covid are why this is a pandemic, not just a school-wide outbreak like head lice, fairly easily contained by sending notes home to parents.

For those of you who flaunt your stupidity, your stubbornness, your refusal to learn and act, who let your paranoia outweigh all common sense, I wish you ... well, just that you somehow do the least harm to others around you. I've stopped caring how you fare, or at least as much as I can giving what I know about how you are affecting others. For that I remain angry with you.

When learning how to raise children, I came across the concepts of logical and natural consequences. Natural consequences are like running without looking where you are going. You are likely to run into something, or tripping and falling. Naturally you are vulnerable to getting hurt. Logical consequences are like when you are driving and speed through an intersection on a red light with a cop sitting there. You are likely to be arrested and have fines imposed or worse. Refusing to get vaccinated during a pandemic brings both the natural consequences of the illness to you and yours, and the logical consequences of the scorn of those around you for your part of spreading covid,  the denial of care and/or hospital space to others who need it because you and your victims are monopolizing it, the resulting damage to the economy, to the education of school children, and other societal damage such choices bring.

May somebody else have mercy. I'm tapped out.