BJ LOAM

Going for the knock out in his last dispatch.

I’m sorry, did I miss something?  Land a punch? Shit, Bro, have you even thrown a punch? 

Get the shot because it’s patriotic? 

Consider your fellow man and get the shot?   

Get the shot or else we’re going to have to shut down again? 

And then this one a couple days ago, where a guy in a chat room I belong to said this in so many words: get the shot to eliminate the fear in our society.  

Oh, and even a rant on Trump and fellow trust fund babies?  I’ll give you that one, though, considering I did go a little off tracks with a gratuitous tour through Panama.  We’re even.   

Afraid?  Get a comfort dog!  Seattle’s got ‘em in litters. 

But, Bro, seriously, tell me this has all been a rope a dope redux, and that now, third and final round, after toying with me a la Ali did Foreman, you’re finally bringing it.  Tell me you’re going to make me feel better about the vaccine that I’ve been told I have to get if I am to stay employed.  Tell me you’re bringing the heat.  The science.  The facts.  Your snot-nosed liberal friends who fancy themselves all read up n’ stuff love talking about the facts, at least when they support the left’s story.  That story would resonate so much better if, one, they weren’t such pompous assholes, and two, they told the wholestory.  Anyway, about the facts–ya got any?     

Wait. 

Never mind. 

You don’t.

Let’s see, what iteration of story are we on now, again?  Oh yeah, I remember: get vaccinated so you don’t get sick or hospitalized.  That’s the latest and greatest.  

Shit, on its own, that sounds all right, innocuous even.  My boss doesn’t want me to get “sick” so he’s forcing me to get the vaccine.  What an all right guy he is.  Let’s put this all in some context.  It’s real-time, hot off the press, why not.      

You know this already, I think, but let me remind you that I have been working since Cocksucker-19 entered the world stage.  I didn’t go home. I was “essential.” I not only read about the story changes like those showing up to work in sweats and eye crusties, I was on the business end of these changes, meaning that every time the story changed, so did the protocols and rules at my work.  

I stopped counting these changes around late last summer.

If I were to detail the inconsistencies at my work–saying and enforcing rules for one group while allowing another to flout them–Bro, you might not even come out for Round 3.   But I should probably stop there for now, until you and I run for office and set this nation straight. Then I don’t have to give a shit about my day job anymore.  Be my running mate?  Screw it, I’ll be yours.  No fuck that, you’ll–

I digress.    

Of course of course of course we had to do something(s) in response to this cocksucker. I’ve never said otherwise. Not saying it now, and I never will.  Stop stop stop the bleeding until which time we get ahead of this son of a bitch.  

First it was the pink juice that we sprayed all over the equipment at work, and then it was the more potent stuff that dried up like smeg.  Looked like it, too.  The distancing and the seating plans–something, anything to stop this fucker cold–I was all for it.   

We heard it all over outside of work, too, didn’t we? Distance yourself, don’t stick your fingers in your mouth and then in your eyeballs (who the fuck that does that in the first place?), sanitize your hands after you’ve sanitized your hands after you’ve touched metal surfaces (because that’s where Cocksucker-19 resided in what story version was it?) and so on and so on until finally–masks.  

And the story on why to do these things was always the same, wasn’t it?  The same story that even you have been telling in your last two Rounds along with Arnold.  Same story you hear on Facebook, ad nauseum, from all the holier-than-thou vaccinated:  Look out for your fellow human being.  Paraphrased so as to sound more, ya know, scientific–do what you can to not transmit this virus on to your neighbor.  

Deal.

No prob.  

Mask up! went the rallying cry from the Blue states.  Don’t be like those red, Trump-loving states.  Brother, I haven’t lived through other vaccines so I don’t know if what I’m about to say is accurate, but I’ve never seen or read about a more politicized vaccine, ever.  This vaccine is being driven more by the fifty or so percent of this country that owns a MAGA hat than the 99.7% who recover from this virus if they contract it.  This should give everyone–you, me, everyone— pause.  Not to mention who’s getting filthy fucking rich off this?  Wasn’t it the left that decried all the companies getting rich off the Iraq war?        

Not to mention science.  Where’s your science?  

I’ll answer it for you. From the looks of things, science has really never been your ally.  At no point in this pandemic was our home, Trump-hating state the shiny example on the hill on how to beat this fucker. Nor was California (see their Christmas 2020 spike) or any other blue state.  We’re still not.     

The other day at The White House, our President urged everyone to get vaccinated.  He called out red Texas and red Alabama only, where hospitalizations were up.  He expanded by pointing out that the majority of the hospitalized were unvaccinated.  What he left out–what’s always left out it seems–is who among that group were old and/or immunocompromised.  The same group who, I concede, benefit from this vaccine.   The same group who ought to be mandated to get the shot.  Not me or the other 99.7%.   

What President Biden also left out, while picking on two red states, was just how much better, and in sharp contrast, Blue states were performing.  How, as a result of more vaccinations, states like ours and California were killing it, pardon the pun.  

Um, it’s because he couldn’t.  

We’re all sucking ass at this at the moment, Brother.  That’s about as scientific as it gets.  What’s more, even after I get vaccinated I can still transmit Cocksucker-19. That, too, is the reality.  That, too, is the science.  Take it up with the CDC if you don’t believe me.    

Which gets us to what number story again?  One that should alarm everyone: Get vaccinated so you don’t get sick. 

I’m heavy with frustration, Brother, and irritation and a bunch of other -ions.  At not only my bosses, but you for not seeing what is so crystal clear: Covid-19 is a proven cocksucker that adapts and adapts and will keep adapting until noone fucking knows how long.  By then, what?  What number booster shot will be mandated down our throats and in our arms?  Your government doesn’t want you getting sick all of a sudden?  That’s the new metric?  Screw the part about getting your neighbor sick, since that’s scientifically been disproven.  Are you ready for these eventualities, Brother, or am I just a whacked out conspiracy theorist?  Not even a year into this vaccine, and it’s booster time.       

Arms are starting to drop.  I’m probably starting to repeat myself.  Let me finish with this:  The other day I asked someone at work who is a self-proclaimed hypochondriac why he so willingly jumped at getting the vaccine.  I was dying to ask him the question, and a window finally opened for me.  For a few seconds, he uttered a lot of the same talking points you and CNN do, until he said this: “my girlfriend is immunocompromised.”

Bingo!  

I don’t have anyone next to me who’s old or immunocompromised.  If I did, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.  I know, I know, what a son of a bitch thing to say, right? Gotta be one of those MAGA hat owners, for sure.   No, friend, it’s pretty fucking normal.  Pretty human.  I don’t elect the vaccine the same way I don’t get the annual flu shot the same way I don’t build a handicap ramp in my house the same way I don’t celebrate gay pride or Ramadan.   

Gasp!  

But how can I say such an asshole thing?  What about my neighbors?  My loved ones who I visit?  

Dumbasses, vaccinated or not, I can still transmit it.  

Damn science.

BLAH

Strikes Back for the Final Blow (viation)

First of all, fuck “the science.” I am not a scientist. Neither are you. And neither is nearly anyone else on social media arguing about science. In fact the easiest way to know that someone is full of shit is if they claim to know, or claim that someone else doesn’t know, “the science.”

And if they go even farther and claim to know a science that other scientists don’t want you to know, science they learned from a scientist so threatening to the status quo that they had to leave science in order to start a scientific website that has been linked over 40,000 times in 2021 alone, they’re so full of shit they should be capped and sealed and used to generate electricity from all the methane they’re producing. Like in the Matrix, but for con-artists and rednecks.

My entire stance on the COVID issue comes down to the only principle I know to be true: self interest. And it’s a ground-base principle I think we all operate from whether we believe in it or not. As I said before, it’s in my self-interest not to get the bug and not to pass it on to those I care about. It’s in my interest to limit the likelihood that the bug can mutate and become even more dangerous over time. Ergo vaccine, and compliance with masking, distancing, and quarantining.

Furthermore, I had my period of vaccine hesitancy. In 2003. When my first child was born and when a not yet exposed con-man had lied his way into science journals to suggest vaccines caused autism. When I was a young pup questioning everything, and when, post-Clinton, post 9-11, post the start of the fake Iraq war, everything felt like a con and sham. So I went and read the science. Actually no that’s a lie. I absolutely did not read the science. I did what everybody does, what all the assholes on the internet are doing today, I went and read the pseudo-science, and the conspiracy theories, and the rational-seeming but overly-concerned, naval-gazing, fear-mongers who wrote for Mothering Magazine.

After going down that rabbit hole and emerging back on the surface, one thing was absolutely clear to me above all. Those fucking anti-vaxxers are crazy. And if not crazy, just selfish. “My kid’s too precious.” Well, in regard to the pandemics of old, fuck your individual kid (unless he or she has a serious health issue of course, nut allergies and “anxiety” don’t count). We all had to pull together to beat small pox, polio, mumps, etc. It’s no different now.

Regarding all the safety protocols that were instituted and then withdrawn in the early months of COVID’s arrival, I just don’t give a fuck. I don’t think the experts are infallible, and no expert opinion issued from any government is going to make it out to the marketplace unmolested by politics. At some point before broadcast the “do not tamper” seal is always going to be at least partly cracked by some party-over-country political flack/hack. I think we should be skeptical. I was skeptical. But as new info came in, I adapted. Like so many others it became very clear to me that masks were needed. Unlike others, I thought all the handwringing about going outside without a mask (or at all) was silly.

Like you, I was deemed an essential worker at the start. In the early days, I was working more than usual to help the org I worked for adapt to all the changes. Unlike you I work at a computer full time, so I spent most of the latter 2/3 of 2020 working from home. My risk was reduced, my life became easier in a way (though I was trapped at home with 3 teenagers and a new puppy), and because I live in a rural area, I could go outside and recreate any time I wanted. Accepting the reality of COVID, treating it as a full threat, and adjusting my life accordingly, did not represent any harm to my self-interest. I was very lucky that way.

I am aware that others were not so lucky. For some COVID put their own health, or loved ones, at enormous risk. For others the reaction to COVID put their livelihoods at enormous risk. I thought it silly that outdoor construction be suspended during the first lockdowns and said so (and was right). I think that the folks who defied or protested those orders weren’t necessarily wrong to do so. I think we reacted too rashly in many cases, but hey, this is the first global pandemic I have ever lived through, so being that I don’t think our leaders are infallible, I cut them some slack. I’d rather the government err on the side of heath and safety.

I have no real qualm with folks who are angry about all the ways that our response to COVID has damaged the economy. In this I am a lousy foil for your debate. I think at some point the economic and mental health damage being wrought by the shut-downs could have a longer lasting negative effect than virus itself. School was a joke during shutdowns, and a bad one. So many kids fell behind, and fell into despair. Telling increasingly lazy disengaged obese Americans that the best thing they could do for their country was Netflix and chill for a year was maybe not the best strategy for building up a healthy populace.

I think folks were right to be upset, and to question authority, but my self-interest led me to think that the best way to lessen the impact of the virus related shut down was to stop the transmission of the goddamn virus. And I don’t think I was (am) wrong about that theory.

But for my theory/course of action to be correct, everyone (or closer to everyone than now) has to take the threat of the virus as equally serious and act accordingly, and obviously not everybody does. Including you. You freely admit to not worrying (much) about getting it or transmitting it. Science, after all, saying that you and yours (the yours you claim) will likely be fine, vaxxed or not. You also say that you believe the virus is “real” and responded accordingly, masking and distancing, etc. If everyone who didn’t want to be vaxxed were masking and distancing when appropriate we wouldn’t be where we are now.

But they aren’t. And that is the issue. Too many of the people who don’t want to vax also don’t want to mask. And don’t want to distance. And when health restrictions were relaxed they heeded no warnings and did everything we knew they shouldn’t do. With no regard to their own health or others. The scope of their self-interest limited only to “can I get what I want at this very second whether it’s good for me or not because I have zero self awareness nor impulse control.” Aka the “herpes rule” as opposed to the golden rule.

In those red states you say were perhaps unfairly cited by stat-cooking libs, it’s true that all last winter and all this spring, Florida-man-in-Chief Ron DeSantis looked to be owning the libs with shorty-got-low-low-low transmission and death rates. Then came summer: that time in the south where, opposite the north, everyone heads inside. Inside into sealed and air conditioned spaces. And guess what? COVID is going crazy and the hospitals are full. It’s no conspiracy.

And you are right, our turn in WA state is coming soon, like a turkey just in time for Thanksgiving, November looms. Though we are of course getting a preview now thanks to all the assholes who care neither for science nor the golden rule and are superspreading the formerly not-so-dangerous-to-children virus into something that is increasingly harmful to the younger and younger.

Which is why I support the vaccine mandates and am glad to hear you’ll be getting yours. If you can’t convince them, coerce ‘em. It worked with polio, seat-belts, and cigarettes and seems fully warranted in regards to COVID-19. Don’t want it? Don’t get it. But don’t expect that your public health liability self can come put everybody else at risk.

When the no smoking in restaurants and bars rules went into effect in my late teens, my father stopped going to his favorite bar (and our virtual second home) in protest. If he couldn’t smoke inside, fuck ‘em. This same bar was owned by one of his oldest friends, even. Still, fuck ‘em. Nobody could tell him where he could and couldn’t smoke. Two years later, at the age of 48, my father hadn’t been back to the bar he loved but still smoked like a fiend and still lived off a half case a beer a night and ate only cold pizza and microwaved popcorn. And then had a massive heart attack and subsequent quadruple bypass. They cut through his chest muscles and sawed his ribcage to do the work. It took him over a year to recover and he never was quite the same. 

And guess who had to quit smoking after all? 

All you vaccine resisters, in my mind, are like my dad. More important to you than anything else (definitely more important than the supposed “science’) is to preserve this tiny sense that no one can tell you what to do. The little chip on your shoulder. And to do it so many of you have to get big and mean and angry. Why? Because that chip is so small, and so precariously placed. Let it fucking drop brother. You will be no less a man, and you might even be more of a man if you can do it.

The things broken men carry are old baggage and small grudges. The things a healthy man carries is concern for himself and his community. A strong man carries is his own bag and the bags of those struggling around him. 

You’re strong as hell motherfucker. You could carry a lot of weight if you let that chip go.