As I make my way around the county and see people who haven’t heard from us at the paper face-to-face in a while, the COVID-19 epidemic comes up in every conversation.
There’s nothing more dividing us now than society’s response to it. After 16 months it will just … not … go … away.
Go any place people gather, like a grocery store, and shout “Masks!”, “Vaccine!” or “Lockdown!” You won’t be able to check out your pork chops, cucumbers and soda before anger sets in.
The infighting has been worse than the virus. I hear the chatter from all sides. It’s loud. It’s noisy. Doctors shout very different opinions, even though their med schools taught the same science.
I’m the son of a registered nurse. Doesn’t make me an expert, but I heard nursing things all my life. Mom was wellversed in viruses and bacteria, so she’d have been all over this topic if she were still with us.
My degree is in journalism, but if you’ve gotten to know me in the month since I’ve returned, my minor is in common sense. I’ll listen to levelheaded information on all sides of the spectrum.
So here’s the gist of what I’ve learned and what it means:
I believe in the science. People like Dr. Anthony Fauci and the surgeon generals in the Trump and Biden camps leaned on facts and made a lot of sense. But there’s plenty of times when science has been presented in a way that easily instills fear.
Scientifically, COVID-19 is not far from the flu. Medically it is much worse. Ask the families of the nearly 40,000 Floridians who have died from it.
The vaccine will help all of us. Get it. In a crowd of unmasked people, the risk now is to the unvaccinated. We vaccinate our children for things like measles; they can’t attend schools without that shot. Right now, why should this be different? Last week both Commissioners Ricky Booth and Viviana Janer, on opposite ends of the political spectrum, bothurged people to roll up their sleeves.
Yes, breakthrough cases exist. But as Nemours Children’s Hospital’s Dr. Ken Alexander has said: “To the vaccinated, it’s like falling off a curb. To the unvaccinated, it’s like falling out a second-story window.”
Now on to masks — another bad word that shouldn’t be. The idea is to prevent exhaling particles that could carry virus into air breathed by others. Put on a mask, hold your hand in front of your face, and breath heavily. Don’t feel anything? Your mask is doing a great job.
The mask also blocks some of those airborne particles from getting in your nose or mouth, but not as well as keeping yours in. It’s not foolproof. It’s also better than nothing. Notice neither comment means, “Masks don’t work!”
Say I have separate 600-count bags of Skittles and M&M’s from which you may eat, one at a time. But first, I say five M&M’s will make you very sick, and one has the potential to kill you.
“No thanks, I’ll have some Skittles,” you might say.
The Skittles represent vaccines and masks.
Many parents, students and teachers want the choice to wear masks in the classroom. Others want government-issued mandates, fearing “other people’s choices.”
I prefer a choice to a mandate; who wants to be ruled? But I’m sending masks to school with both my kids, a fully-vaccinated seventh-grader and a special needs first-grader. We asked the 12-yearold to put hers on if she feels uncomfortable or if everyone else in the room is wearing one.
My parental choice is made. Society’s next step is to respect it. I don’t want other parents — or Ron DeSantis — giving me grief on the decision that he told me to make!
As for lockdown: we all should have done it for 21 days of true lockdown. Go to the store to get lots of groceries, to the pharmacy for your prescriptions, then … see you in three weeks!
Work from home. Play from home. Go for a solo walk or bike ride at night but … stay home!
Businesses would have suffered, but we could have put in programs to cover that one month of rent, mortgage, car and other payments. Extend leases and loans a month and back-end that payment. By staying away from each other the virus would have run out of hosts, and we would have come back to society free from masks and most of the horrors.
We wrote our own rules instead. So did I. Google told me I left my subdivision six times in April 2020. Four of them were to play golf. Because the course was open. I thought I knew better. A handful of guys and gals at our club caught the ‘Rona.
So, 16 months, here we are — still disagreeing about all of this.
Please, let’s not endure 16 more months of This.
So let’s make good choices — like, when you’ve had too much of this, swing a cucumber at someone instead of a golf club.
