I have not accomplished much this week because I have had a cold. The common cold. I live on a boat in the middle of a bay. I have contact with other humans about 10% of the time. We don’t shake hands anymore and many of them have on masks. We are usually six feet apart. It is over 90 degrees. And yet, I catch a cold. I am now getting ready to give my take on Covid. If you do not care about my take on Covid, then stop reading now. If all of this social distancing and other nonsense cannot stop the common cold, then why do we think it will stop Covid? It has not and it will not. We are trying to control nature and that is a losing battle. People will argue with me, “What if your child dies of Covid? Or your parents?” Valid argument. However, what if my children or parents die of cancer, stroke, heart attack, terrorist attack? Do I stop living life to avoid those possibilities? When my kids were younger, my biggest fear was that they would be hit by a car. I think every parent has one thing that they fear most. My best friend had a fear of her child choking and another had a fear of her child being abducted. For so many years, I worried about something that had such a small chance of happening but it dominated my thoughts. I think that is what we are allowing Covid to do in our lives today. Dominating our thoughts in such a skewed way that the fear factor is far worse than Covid itself. I am not saying that Covid is not a deadly virus that kills people but is it really killing more people than the flu, car accidents, cancer, etc? It would be horrible to lose a loved one to Covid. However, would it be any worse than losing a loved one in any other way? Is a Covid death more devastating than a cancer death? In my eyes, a death is a death. Some might argue that a Covid death is worse because it could have been prevented. I completely disagree. No one can prevent death no matter what the form. At some point, we must go back to living. This morning, the powers-that-be stated that not celebrating Thanksgiving with family would be the best course of action to avoid Covid. Thanksgiving is my family’s biggest holiday. We all look forward to it every year. So, should we cancel it and not spend what time we have left on this earth together? Would being alone on Thanksgiving and possibly not catching Covid be worth the risk that one of our family members might not be here next year? There are no guarantees in life, especially when dealing with life. The old adage that ‘tomorrow never comes’ has been around for years for a reason. In my opinion, the Covid mandates have had the opposite effect than what was intended. Quarantine for healthy people has seen an increase in obesity, anxiety, depression, suicides. We have taken productive societies and shut them down “hoping” to avoid mass contamination which has caused an increase in worldwide poverty. I just cannot fathom the logic in taking perfectly healthy people and putting them in isolation. If you are high risk, take precautions but do not stop living. Life is not a dress rehearsal. We do not get a second chance. If you start to feel anxious today about Covid, turn off the tv and put Covid into perspective. It is a germ. It can make you sick. It could possibly kill you but so can that truck that is barreling through the red light. Live your life today because right now is the only guarantee that you will ever have. Epilogue I rest my case: Just before publishing this blog, I got a text from my daughter. She was at work and got bitten by a rat. Yes, a rat. Does she work in a sewer you ask? No. She works at one of the fanciest restaurants in Charleston where evidently a rat needed to be corralled so, of course, she was in charge. A fact about rats that would have been handy for Kaarin to know prior to grabbing the rat: unlike snakes, you cannot grab them behind the head because they can still move their head and bite you. So, she went to the ER and the bite was infected but thankfully, rats cannot transfer rabies to humans so she just needed an antibiotic. If this situation does not support my previous rant about putting Covid into perspective, nothing does…..So….go live your life because evidently there are rabid rats everywhere…just lurking and waiting to take you out!
1 Comment
Candi
11/5/2020 04:34:24 pm
Hi Sally,
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