Crede Bailey, Director of White House security battled COVID-19 a few months ago. He spent three months in the hospital. And he had to have his left big toe amputated, as well as his entire right leg below the knee.
Just a bad flu, right? When’s the last time you had to have an amputation because of a bad flu?
Just a hoax, right? Ask this man and his family. Ask the families of 300,000 Americans how much a hoax THEY think this is?
Every time I think about this...and how it did NOT have to be this bad...I get seething, raging mad.
Though this guy is a staffer in an enemy Administration, I do not wish him ill, and he did not deserve this. I would not wish this on my worst enemy. But I DO keep wondering what event...will finally get the COVID deniers and the mask-refusers...to finally take this shit seriously.
I am not afraid to die. We all will die some day...life itself is a terminal condition. That’s just reality. I am certainly in no hurry. This is the one and only life that we know FOR SURE that we get. That being said, the one thing keeping me going right now...is the fact that my house, my single-wide mobile home...is not yet paid off...and there is not enough insurance and savings to fully pay it off.
My 74-year old Mom lives in my home, and I promised her a home for life and I will do everything I can to make good on that promise. I owe her that...she took me in at 34 years of age after Hurricane Katrina ruined me. And we have lived in the same house together every since...first, in her home in Pennsylvania...then, after she lost it through no fault of her own in the housing bust of 2008 (she managed to hang on till 2013) we came here to NC in 2014...and I bought the mobile home we now both live in.
She kept me for nine years when she did not have to. She gave me the opportunity to get back on my feet and have a chance to make something of myself. I owe her the world...and the very least I will do...is make sure she doesn’t end up homeless. She doesn’t deserve that. And that is why I take COVID seriously. Because, without me and without my income...she faces the possibility of becoming homeless...and I will not allow that to happen if there is any way on God’s green earth I can prevent it.
So...how about the rest of you who take COVID seriously? Why do YOU take it serious? What’s important to YOU?? What do YOU value?? Maybe we need to start talking in terms like this to get the COVID deniers and mask refusers to start thinking about what is REALLY valuable….to them.
Maybe then we can get the conversation going in the right direction, and kick this pandemic’s ass.
We are not out of the woods yet. Vaccines are just now coming online, and it will be six months to a year before it is available to enough people to possibly achieve a herd immunity that will protect most of us. So, for the next six months to a year...we ALL need to think about what is most important and valuable to us LONG TERM...and not in the short-term desires of immediate gratification (and that is asking a lot of most Americans, I know) — I am able to think in these terms, because, as a trans woman in America...I have never had material wealth. I have had to learn about the things that are TRULY VALUABLE.
This pandemic has highlighted, for all to see...the disparities of our current system, and how it fails so many of us. When this is done, we need to look at ways to improve the system, and not just re-embrace the systems that already so utterly failed us once.
I close with the wisdom of Dolly Parton...who, by the way, contributed financially to the development of the vaccine.