I’m Tired of It Too
By: The Good Men Project
Tags: Relationships, Ethics, Covid 19, Mental Health, Community

I’m Tired of It Too

Photo credit: Shutterstock

By Jeremy Barnes

For those that aren’t aware, my real job is as an X-Ray technologist in a middle-sized community hospital. Something else that you might not know is that one of the first things that a patient presenting with symptoms related to Covid-19 gets is a chest X-Ray. It doesn’t make me an expert by any means and I’d never presume to expect anybody to ask for or place any extra emphasis on my opinion about public health matters but I do think that it gives me a perspective that others might not have. Some people respect that perspective, others don’t.

One person that seems to, that often asks me for my thoughts on how things are going, is my man The Astonishing Kyle Jackson from The Astonishing Tales digital magazine. When he recently asked me why I don’t write about it more often I had to take a minute and think about my answer.

The truth is that I’m tired of it, the same as all of us.

I’m tired of that ticker that CNN has on the entire right side of the screen. I’m tired of governors overstepping their authority and telling restaurants and bars what time they can stay open to and how they have to operate their private businesses. I’m tired of family and friends having their livelihood threatened by these rules and not being able to stop somewhere on my way home to try and support them.

I’m tired of not being able to go on weekend getaways, of my pool league being shut down. I’m tired of trying to find ways to amuse my kid on weekends with cold weather here and movie theaters and roller skating rinks closed down. It sucks that she has barely seen my parents this past year and sucks that even if I had them to use as babysitters there is no place to go. I love all the extra time I get with her but I’m tired of fourth-grade math and trying to get her to understand it. I’m tired of trying to understand it myself.

Mostly though, I’m tired of assholes, of the people that for one reason or another just don’t get it or just don’t give a crap. I’m tired of seeing their stupid maskless faces in Wal Mart, of resisting the urge to punch people that mock my “face diaper” in the grocery bottle return, of having to follow their idiotic trucks around town.

Photo courtesy of the author

I’m tired of fighting with them online, of seeing their Facebook posts and trying to decide if they are worth keeping as contacts. A few days ago a woman told me that she knew I was lying because she had recently gone to a hospital “to check it out for herself” and did not see lots and lots of people with Corona. She’s a hairdresser in Florida and I’m sure the access available to her was more than she would get at my hospital but if somebody could explain to me how I’m supposed to argue with that kind of stupidity I’d like to hear it.

I’m tired of the truth, the fact that even though there have been a lot of important lessons learned and treatments discovered that have dramatically increased the survival rate of those infected there appear to be severe long-term negative health effects for many. The fact that this is a worldwide pandemic, not something that is only happening here and didn’t go away after the election. That there have been other coronaviruses with higher mortality rates but not as contagious as this one and that any vaccines coming out now are based on research done since SARS was first identified in 2003. That hospitals get more money to care for COVID patients because…wait for it…it costs more money to care for COVID patients.

I’m sure there are inaccuracies in the numbers, for a long time there weren’t enough kits to test everybody that should have been tested. Now everybody can get tested and lots of asymptomatic people are coming up positive but more testing doesn’t make people sicker. At the end of November, there were three times as many people admitted into the hospitals of the system I work for than there were at the beginning of the month.

It’s been nine months and I’m still changing my shoes and clothes at work, still showering as soon as I get home most nights, still worrying about what I might be bringing home to my friends and family, the ones that I actually see once in a while.

I could go on, could rant about how this shouldn’t be political, about how we get our news now and what we choose to believe or not believe. I could talk about how disappointing it is to see so many people simply unwilling to inconvenience themselves for the good of society.

I could but I’m tired. Tomorrows going to be another busy day I’m sure.

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The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.

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About Jeremy Barnes

Jeremy Barnes is a forty-something husband and father to a 7-year-old and and a 19-year-old. When he isn’t blogging about family and parenting at Thirsty Daddy, Jeremy works as an X-Ray technologist, complains about the Red Sox, and chases lost golf balls. He can be found on Twitter @jermbarnes and @thirstydaddy.