#Covid #lockdowns and #vaccines saved almost a million lives in the US over the last four years. There's the really important part. If you stop reading now, remember that. Everything else is commentary.
The number will grow over time, because covid is still killing people. Last time I checked, it accounted for 0.4% of US deaths, 30-40 per day. Thirty or forty people who desperately wanted another year, another month, another day, another hour. Thirty or forty grieving families. Thirty or forty lifetimes of memory gone. Thirty or forty worlds entire.
Better than hundreds, or thousands, and if you don't remember those days then it's because you've made yourself forget. I can't say I blame you.
Cost, you say? *Cost*? I'm sure economists can break it down to the penny. Places I loved died, as surely as people. Ruined careers, shattered dreams, lives not ended but made less. Yes. I acknowledge this.
I say the real cost cannot be measured in money. The nineteenth crow broke us. We have collective post-covid syndrome, and it's not going away any time soon. Our sanity, not just as individuals but as a people, was maybe never that great to start with. Now it's staggering down the alley talking to itself, grabbing onto walls for support, and baby, there's no detox for that.
Some of those eight hundred thousand actively take the side of a virus against their fellow human beings. They survived not because of science or medicine or even plain luck, but because of some special virtue. They were chosen by divine favor. They came through okay, so it was never that bad. They know it was a commie plot. Whatever. You've heard it all before.
Not a majority, I still believe that. A hundred thousand? Two? Three?
*Enough*, along with tens of millions of others.
There it is, the worst cost of all. We tolerate their continued existence, these traitors to humanity, because the alternative is horror. Because we still hope, desperately, that we might be able to bring some of them around. Because they're our families and friends. Because we're better than them.
We pay for them, every day, and we will keep paying for the rest of our lives.
Next time, and there will be a next time, they'll be ready. Will you? Eight hundred thousand saved—and over a million gone. They'll do their best to add to the latter number. For *anyone* you love, whatever side they're on, stand up. Do what's right, and never stop pushing others to do the same.
Maybe it's time for me to stop banging this drum. I don't believe that, though. The next virus, or bacterium, or parasite ... it will be ready too.
