Jim Wright

 Jim Wright posted the following................

Today, this morning:

Post Office

I'm in line. Despite signs, woman walks in without a mask, ignores social distancing, stops behind me. Coughs.

Me: Back the fuck up. 500,000 Americans are dead and you're STILL not wearing a mask.

Her: <literally screams> IT'S NOT 500,000 DEAD! THEY'RE LYING! FAUCI'S LYING! SHEEP! BAAAA!

<Ten minutes later>

Hardware Store

At the register. Another customer approaches, no mask. Walks up right behind me

Me: Back the fuck up. We're a year into this, you shouldn't have to be told to wear a damn mask and maintain your distance

Him: I ALREADY HAD IT, I'M IMMUNE!

<Ten minutes later>

Grocery store

Parking lot. Dad and kid. Kid maybe 5. Kid masked, dad not

Kid: How come you don't have a mask?

Dad: <making eye contact with me wearing a mask> Because I'm not a pussy.

Kid: <takes mask off> I'm not a pussy either!

Dad: Don't say pussy

(I didn't go into the store. I'll go to the base commissary later, they enforce mask policy)

I had heart surgery earlier this year.

As such, I'm high risk for COVID even though I'm not 65.

My cardiologist contacted me, said I was eligible for the vaccine.

Me: I didn't think there was enough?

Turns out, people around here are refusing to take it because <GIBBERING MADNESS>!

You know, we could be beyond this thing by June.

We could. The whole nation.

It could be over. Life could return to normal -- whatever the hell passes for THAT is nowadays anyway.

But we're not going to be over it. It's not going to be over, not for a long, long time. Maybe never.

At least not around here.

Because these ignorant, backward, foolish, selfish, brainless, stupid, fearful, toothless redneck fucks would rather believe insane baseless conspiracy theories from TV pundits and hysterical internet "experts" instead of actual science and actual doctors. That's why.

These are the same people who spent years listening to Rush Limbaugh tell them how smoking doesn't cause cancer, it's all a conspiracy theory by ... I dunno, the Surgeon General, I guess. And even after that pompous bloviating windbag died of FUCKING LUNG CANCER FROM SMOKING, they still believe him, puffing away on their smokes with their masks dangling from their chins like a sagging jockstrap.

These ridiculous assholes spend literally tens of thousands of dollars on guns and ammo and filters to turn their piss into drinking water, on giant monster trucks to 4-wheel their way out of some imagined apocalypse.

But WON'T wear a mask, distance, or take the vaccine.

These miserable dimwitted clods all think they're going to rule the wasteland with their guns and their trucks after the Zombie Plague, but in reality they're all that one shitty guy in every movie who hides the bite from his companions until he suddenly turns and kills them all.

(I was going to say "turns into a monster," but the truth is that these people have been monsters all along. Generations)

I feel guilty about being offered the vaccine when others elsewhere who need it worse can't get it.

But, I also have people who depend on me for their lives and livelihoods

And I'm at high risk. My doctors STRONGLY recommended I take the opportunity to get the shot.

Doses of the vaccine are going to waste because those eligible won't take them despite their vulnerability.

Not only are those eligible refusing to take the vaccine, but they are DELIBERATELY increasing the likelihood of infecting others.

People like me.

So, I did it.

I got the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine an hour ago

I do feel guilty about it.

I do. A bit. More than a bit.

But then I think of that kid in the parking lot, with the father more concerned about the appearance of his supposed manhood than his own damn child.

Maybe me being vaccinated will help protect that kid from the other murderous idiots I ran into this morning.

I don't know.

I don't know how this country has gone so wrong.

I don't know how a people who once led a GLOBAL effort to wipe out diseases like smallpox, who once looked upon a president crippled by polio and upon thousands of their own children confined to iron lungs and said no more, who were once proud of the science and the knowledge that landed human beings on the Moon, I don't know how THAT nation became a bunch of swaggering shouting louts who would deliberately put their neighbors, their own KIDS, at risk in the name of an insane ideology based on hate, fear, and a staggering prideful ignorance.

I don't know.

I don't have a snappy wrap up here.

America has survived many things, but I suspect we will not long survive this, the real plague, the one of willful foolishness that seems to have infected far, far, too many Americans.

Wear you mask.

Keep your distance.

Wash your hands.

Get the shot when you can.