The Pandemic Comes Home To Roost

 My Daddy has COVID.

Oh, no.

We're not entirely sure where he caught it; Mom is testing negative. It started with a small cough, as it always does these days, and quickly devolved into exhaustion and All The Coughing. A week into COVID, he has a touch of pneumonia, and has been given some additional medications to try to help with that. He is not a candidate for the antiviral meds because of his already-fragile condition. 

He is frustrated, and tired, and my heart breaks for him. This is not how he wants to spend his few remaining months. And there is not much we can do, except offer support and send messages of love. I have plane tickets to go visit in a few weeks, though if things turn southward I can go up there earlier. 

This is why I am still wearing a mask most of the time, especially when travelling by plane or public transport, and visiting medical offices: I don't know whether there are people nearby who will pass germs on to me; or (in the event that has already occurred) whether I will inadvertently pass along germs to someone else who will experience dire consequences as a result. 

And that second point, is the kicker. Someone who works with, or near, the frail elderly has passed this Pandemic Plague along, and it is my father who is suffering the consequences. 

I know that sometimes it can't be helped -- we don't always know what germs we are harboring, we have no intent to make other sick.  Yet during the past two and a half years, there have been so many people who have turned public-health issues such as wearing a mask and social distancing, into some kind of ridiculous political football. A weird sort of "freedom" with a decidedly anti-science stance. Not a "we're all in this together, let us protect our most vulnerable" attitude that would serve humankind best during a Pandemic, but rather, a kind of, "F*ck everyone else, I will do what I want regardless of the consequences of my behavior on other people." 

It has made me lose a lot of my faith in humanity. 

As COVID inevitably steals some of my father's little remaining time on this earth, the rage I have toward people who have prolonged this terrible Pandemic through deliberate and harmful behavior, grows brutal and ugly and more immense, every day.

Those people can all go straight to Hell. And I will see them there, because there is no forgiveness in my heart. And there never will be.