I get that everyone is really freaking tired of this pandemic by now, but what I don’t get is being so tired that they’re willing to put their friends and family and neighbors at risk by not following safety precautions – some of which are really pretty simple.
I mean, I get tired of parenting from time to time, and work, and all sorts of things, but that doesn’t mean I can just stop doing them because I don’t feel like it anymore!
You change things up and try to make it a little more pleasant. Maybe try to get some help. But you can’t just quit.
Especially when we’re just talking about wearing masks and avoiding gathering in large groups … because I can’t think of a more selfish reason to spread a disease that’s killed 1.5 million people globally than “I just had to go out because I miss my friends.”
You can call them. Text them. Email them. Zoom them. IM them. Share a socially distanced meal together.
What you can’t do is just pretend like this whole pandemic isn’t actually a thing, or something that “everybody’s going to get anyways” and so it’s not worth taking precautions over.
Tell that to the people who’ve lost someone this year, who will be wrapping one less Christmas gift or setting one less place at the table for dinner, and who maybe didn’t even get to say goodbye to their loved ones in person.
I have a lot of sympathy for people whose businesses are struggling right now – I really do. This is an unprecedented time and frankly, our government has really failed the American public by not making more of an effort to shore up our safety nets instead of focusing its efforts like usual on the super wealthy and protecting companies from liability for not taking COVID seriously. There’s absolutely no excuse for it.
But you can’t just slough off the rules that have been put in place because you’re angry or tired or frustrated or frozen in disbelief that COVID is a real thing. We’re not done yet. We will be – eventually – and then we can throw big parties and celebrate for everything that we missed out on in 2020, but now’s not the time for that – not when we’re in the middle of a third wave that makes the first two look like something out of the kiddie pool…
