So I heard this sad anecdote from a friend. I respect that it's just one story, not proof positive of what had to have been and what could've been.
A friend was supposed to host a party soon, but her best friend's dad is currently on a ventilator, so the event probably will get canceled. Next door in the hospital in a semi-rural county, the best friend's father-in-law. The couple got hitched a few years back, and might well have known each other since they were kids. There's something that just resonated in such a sad way about it for me. Who knows if they liked each other, but they probably joked at some point about who will get to take the grandkids on a given week, when that happens. Now, one has to be contemplating if he'll ever see those, and the other, well, I don't know what one is aware of with a machine breathing for them.
Both had kids who begged them to get the jab. Both declined, for reasons as political as anything else. Maybe they still get it if they're vaccinated, maybe it's just as severe. The world is uncertain that way. I spoke to another friend who knew the couple. He was more vitriolic than I am. He was mad they declined medicine, then turned up needing it desperately (some people are on this train, though I think it's a bad and dangerous precedent, but it does get folks riled).
Before I went to bed last night, I though that would be the end of a post like this. But before I got up, my mind kind of jumped elsewhere. It's interesting how we meet out our pity and mercy. Someone will lambast those ill and dying with a stat that lacks context but certianly does make the speaker feel better about not caring. But the same individual will resolutely argue that someone's choice to decline medicine and take their chances is no big deal. Probably the residue of a rather universal political dialogue that's rotting parts of our brains, but interesting in its way.