Waiting For Somebody Else To Die...

...So You Can Get Your Turn At An ICU Bed. So you can likely die there too. Taking somebody else's spot, somebody who's waiting for you to die also. 

You might think of this as a moral dilemma. But you'd have to be a certain kind of moral person in the first place. Maybe there's a tightrope you can mentally walk, where it's OK to wait for somebody else to die so you can get your turn, so long as you sort of hope that they don't die. 

Sort of. Because of course  you really really  hope you can get your own turn for the best care and treatment, and you know the only way a bed clears up for you is by somebody dying. The ones who don't quite die don't count. They are going to be taking up their ICU bed for weeks or months, and even after they improve are likely going to go on for months or longer of half-living, their bodies ravaged by all the effects of long covid, the blood clots, the mental fog, the gasping for oxygen that there's never quite enough of. 

So you gotta hope somebody dies quickly. No prolonging agony because that wouldn't be merciful - for them or for you. Because  by this time, for you, there's going to be a much-too-long time where you can wonder, as you search for each breath,  why your supreme diety left you - yes, wonderful, faithful, observant you - in this struggling state, when obviously you deserve that bed, where you're not sure that anonymous stranger does. Were they as wonderful as you? As faithful to your deity? As observant of the holy laws? As trusting in your earned place at the head of whatever line you need to be head of? Why, such a long wait might even lead to doubt, and why would your deity tempt you that way?

Speaking of mercy, how much are you showing to all those medical people who have to tend those unending lines of people who are showing up, waiting for the next bed to open for their turn in it, knowing most of them are going to die also, those medical personnel who have to go home night after night unable to save lives as they were trained, burnt out and still facing the endless streams of you coming through their doors? They daily have to face the process of triage, a terrible burden on those whose only wish is to heal. You could have chosen not to be here!

You've been scared. First, all those wicked people trying to get you to believe that there's some horrible new disease out there, created just to kill you, but it's only a hoax because those awful people have  for sure some evil purpose either to scare you in order to somehow control you, or perhaps even kill you if - just maybe if - it's not all a hoax.

Then there's some demoniacal vaccine developed almost miraculously, but you know that's not safe. You can wait and make sure it's OK first, but you're sure it'll sterilize your men, abort your babies, embed microchips in your body because somehow your cell phones aren't already tracking your movements to whatever extent somebody might want to do that because... you are somehow more important than your 300 million fellows are to be tracked and monitored? Besides, needles are scary.

You watch as people around you get sick - or so they're told - and yet they're just not that sick. A sniffle, an ache, even nothing at all, and they're told to stay home, miss work, miss out on fun, and all for nothing much at all. Why should you be bothered with something that little? You've had colds before. Everybody gets them. No biggie. Only the old and week die off, and they do that anyway from the flu, so it's just their time, right? Some people who've been hiding other illnesses get sick to, some of those die, and isn't that just culling the herd? You hear that those people get sicker than your people, and doesn't that just mean they are a weaker kind of person and that means your people are better?

The news keeps changing. Facts and truth should always be a stable thing, unchanging, for anything else is a pack of lies. Masks? First they say no, then they try to make you wear them. Which is the lie? They can be uncomfortable so why lose that freedom to go without them because it's your deity-given right to do whatever you please and this nation was founded under (your choice of favorite deity here), so just another reason to avoid wearing a mask. You won't get sick anyway, because it's still just a cold except for those weaker folks.

You haven't gotten to the point of thinking about how you can spread it to all those others without even realizing you're sick. You haven't accepted that it's changing, getting worse, because, remember now, truth doesn't change. Even if you're "forced" to wear a token mask because some bully wants to take away your freedom, you can't breathe "enough" so it's pulled off your nose. Surely that doesn't do any harm? Surely if you can be safe being six feet away from the next person, doesn't that really mean just 3 feet? And only if they're coughing? And never never ever do they mean your good friends, your fellow church-going buddies, your family who needs to attend that wedding, funeral, party, rally, concert....

Now after all that, now that you're really truly "likely", as they say, and really truly need that already filled ICU bed, all you can do is wait and hope it opens up soon. For you. Because it's "your turn" now. You deserve it and that means yesterday.

I am willing to bet that, when you and  hundreds of thousands of your fellows are lined up waiting for "your" bed to open up, your thoughts are not going to be centered on how you could have avoided getting here. Or how you could have avoided assisting all these others in getting here with you. And I bet you also won't understand just why it is, with so many patients waiting and so few staffed beds available, that the people jumping to the head of the line aren't going to be those who chose to be here, but those who tried to do all they could to avoid getting here. Because that's where we're heading. Judgement calls are going to have to be made. Lines are going to have to be drawn. Rulings are already being made. That person in a terrible accident might be chosen ahead of you and you won't understand how we got to this place. That child who, for a little while yet, still isn't eligible  to be vaccinated and hasn't made the choice to be here as you have, might get pushed to the head of the line.

And you just won't understand it. This was your "Freedumb." But....

Bye bye.