A middle-aged woman walked into the store on Saturday, a long time customer, usually polite, one who has recently borne her own measure of sickness, and when she asked for a coffee and to sit and drink, we said that yes, coffee is fine, what would you like?, but no, the Virus causes us to ask you to drink it outside, she said, “Oh what is this? What are we coming to? Only old people die of it. It is so exaggerated.”
On November 14, Jodi Orth, an ER nurse in South Dakota tweeted this:
“I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that “stuff” because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens, and I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.”
In Mitchell, SD, a prairie town of just over 15,000, they have been dying for weeks. Everyone knows someone who has died of the Virus. They have had a 433% increase in Covid infections since October. The School District instituted its own mask mandate and has been able to keep schools open.
The City Council could only pass a toothless mask mandate. Before the vote, and during the debate “anti-mask forces sat with naked faces, defying the mayor’s order. One by one, they got up to air their grievances. They wept. They swore. They cited junk science: Positivity defeats the virus. So does a healthy lifestyle, eating wild-caught sardines, pasture-raised beef liver and drinking raw organic kombucha. A young mother stood up and compared anti-maskers to Jews persecuted in the Holocaust: “The bare face is the new yellow star of Nazi Germany,” she said.”
“The resulting decision … made few on either side happy. The town was divided as ever, and people of Mitchell still had to wake up the next morning and face each other at the grocery store, church and the local sushi restaurant.”
Over time in this country, whole classes of people, entire races, those who practice one or two of the great world religions have been disposable, their deaths counted as less important. I did not think to see the elderly added to that list.
I’ve heard masks derided as “blasphemous” because they hide the “image of God in which we were made.” I’ve heard men say they aren’t masculine. I’ve heard too many say that Covid “is just the flu.” For many Americans, an adherence to individuality above every other value has become psychotic. Combine that psychosis with bone-deep stupidity about science generally and specifically about how the Virus spreads primarily through air-borne droplets. Add in terrible, often criminally negligent leadership and the result is over 300,000 dead and climbing.
What have we become? What are we becoming? 
