Just wear the mask
Tags: Conspiracy Theories, Covid-19, Masks, Coronavirus, Virus

There’s no good way to die.

That was one of the lessons I took from losing a parent early and fast.

I guess one could argue that dying of old age after living a good life is the best way, but even the people that do so still impart pain on others. Death and dying cause horrible psychological effects on everyone.

Even if you see it coming, there’s still pain. A slow, foreseeable death is better for the people who get left behind, but harder on the person who dies.

When you don’t see it coming though, when a loved one dies quickly, you don’t or barely get a chance to say goodbye, and then the death happens fast before a person’s “time”, well that’s when it hurts the most. A fast death is better for the person who dies as the suffering they endure is quick, but much harder on their loved ones.

Again, there’s no good way to die.

The thing that hits me so hard is the number of coronavirus deaths that keeps rising is that healthy people are getting used to it, questioning the numbers, calling it a hoax, and getting visibly angry over minor inconveniences like wearing a mask. Reopening the economy was essentially throwing in the towel due to a complete, avoidable failure of the federal government to form a strategy to contain the virus (more on that later) and masks are basically all we have.

Over 130,000 Americans have died of the virus since March. When I think of my father’s car accident that I was in, the level of pain I suffered witnessing his death, and him dying five hours later. I can’t put it into words… it is an indescribable, unimaginable level of pain unless you’ve been through it yourself. I read and write regularly, almost have two masters degree, I’m a “words” person, and I do not believe that I can ever accurately describe the level of pain and suffering I went through.

I handled it the best I could. I made some mistakes, I think I was colder and angrier for a while, but I came out a better person in the end. Pain made me stronger and imparted in me a desire for others not to suffer. To those that know pain, generosity is second nature.

Here are the hardest words for me to say as someone who knows pain:

No one deserves the level of suffering I went through.

But ALL of the loved ones of the +130,000 people who died (relatively quickly) are suffering right now. They’re suffering at a level they never thought possible.

Most deaths were avoidable.

There are currently 160 cases of coronavirus per million people in America. In the European Union, that number is 9. Nine! If we had had a decent response to the virus, we wouldn’t have made the conversations solely about reopening the economy or locking down forever. The government would have used the time we gave them during lockdown to massively expand contact tracing and testing. Contact tracers would have detected people who had or may have the virus and encouraged them to quarantine so that they didn’t spread it. Massively ramping up testing would have done the same thing. It would have caught any asymptomatic carriers and had them quarantine. That’s what other countries have done and it worked. It’s impossible to prevent every death, but at least we could have said we were doing everything we could.

Instead the federal government did essentially nothing and focused on reopening the economy due to the election.

And there are ramifications for that decision that people aren’t thinking or talking about beyond the human suffering (which no one is talking about). Kids will lose out on educational gains because remote schooling just isn’t as good, those who recover will suffer potentially for the rest of their lives and need high levels of medical treatment, and the knowledge and training of every person who died is gone which will hurt businesses and nonprofit employers.

I wish that masks weren’t politicized. It’s the easiest, simplest thing that one can do to prevent the spread because unless you’re getting tested constantly you don’t know if you have the virus. It might be an infringement of individual liberties, but it is also an infringement on other people’s lives and pursuits of happiness.