Come To Think About It, What Do I Care?

I was supposed to leave here early this morning, to go see my family in Massachusetts.  I was supposed to be there all week.  My Massachusetts family are my daughter, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren.  I'm very hungry for those people.

But I had to cancel my trip, because I got what I thought was a cold on Friday, and it turned out I tested positive for the coronavirus.  Some self-absorbed and rebellious idiot who was most likely not vaccinated was prancing around unmasked, blowing coronaviruses out of his or her mouth.  And because of that antic, I couldn't see my family up north (I've been eagerly awaiting this for months), and I can't interact with anyone else, either.  Because I have what feels to me like a minor cold, but which is accompanied by a positive coronavirus test.

And that's how it's said to be right now, with the omicron variant.  Vaccinated people, like me, who get infected, wind up with something that feels like a normal cold.

Not so, though, for the unvaccinated people.  They can get sick, or very sick.  They can wind up in the hospital, in the ICU, intubated, or they can die.  

And I wouldn't want that.  I wouldn't want to be the cause of someone else's misery.  Or injury.  And certainly not their death.  At least in theory, I wouldn't.

But if I'm being entirely honest with myself, and looking at this clearly, it appears this kind of concern is a one-way street.  Somebody else didn't care what happened to me, or what consequences this created for my life.  They cared only about their twisted selves, and their bizarre and as yet unexplained theory that somehow, public health measures were an unfair imposition on them.  And tragically, the governor in this state enables this kind of distorted thinking.  (I'm still curious to know what they think about the legal requirement that they got vaccinated in order to go to school, and that they get their children vaccinated, at least for the same reason, and that the government requires them and their children to wear seatbelts in the car, and that the government requires them to have automobile liability insurance, and that the government requires them to obey speed limits, and STOP signs and red lights, even if in their judgment, it doesn't look like any other cars are coming, so there's really no reason to stop.)

I still don't want to be around my family now, and I don't want to be around anyone else (people I know and care about, or any normal and decent people) until I convert to a negative test.  But as for the other people, who prance blithely around, unprotected and unprotecting, smugly infecting others, what do I care what happens to them?  They might get infected, and sick, and possibly die?  Because they chose not to get vaccinated?   Apparently, according to their theory, that's not my problem.

And if matters could be made any worse, since I wasn't packing for today, and I had a "cold," I watched two movies yesterday: "Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up."  I didn't like either of them.