It's been over a month since I had my second hit of Moderna so I'm about as immune as I'm going to get. So is everyone who comes into my home and while we don't wear masks on the premises, we do whenever we venture outside. There are folks who would say we don't need to but we all feel like we need to. If we're wrong, then at least we're erring on the side of caution…and not making others feel as uncomfy as we all do to be around unmasked strangers.
When the history of The Great Pandemic of 2020 and Beyond is written, I believe it will show that the disease was prolonged by cities "opening up" too soon, people not wearing masks and too many "super-spreader" events held by people who thought it was over — or some sort of hoax — when it wasn't. It certainly isn't being prolonged by too much mask-wearing.
Here's an article about The Shaming of Those Who Break COVID Restrictions. I haven't done a lot of scolding because of my "a-holes will be a-holes" philosophy. It generally seems saner to try avoiding those people instead of engaging them and thinking you can change a mind set in Lucite.
The ones I've encountered up-close and personal all seem to think that "the government (or popular opinion) keeps telling me to do it" is reason enough to not do something. I've tried to point out to a few that the government (or popular opinion) also tells you not to consume a lot of alcohol and then drive a car but they don't get it. I don't think I've ever met anyone who said "If I'm wrong, I'm only hurting myself" who only hurt themselves.
These past 387 days haven't been bad for me, largely owing to the fact that I'm in a profession where I work at home. And I want to thank whoever arranged it that we didn't have this lockdown before someone had invented The Internet, ZOOM, FaceTime, e-mail, file transfer services like Dropbox, Home Video and Streaming, Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc. When people talk about plagues of the past, they're talking about a world that didn't have any of those things.
Still, I feel for those who've lost lives and loved ones, jobs and careers, income they'll have a hard time replacing, precious time with others and all the other catastrophes, large and small. And I worry for one friend in particular who doesn't think he needs to get vaccinated.
Last August or so, he felt like crap for a couple of days, then recovered. No doctor or test told him he'd had Coronavirus but he decided he had…so he now insists his body has all the antibodies it needs to keep the beast at bay. As if COVID-19 is the only thing that could possibly make you feel bad for a few days. As you well know, before it came along, none of us ever felt bad for a few days…