My cousin is in the hospital in Louisiana with Covid

[Mortos]

Last edited Sun Aug 8, 2021, 07:16 PM - Edit history (2)

We were pretty close as kids. We went hunting, fishing, swimming, and boating through Louisiana's rivers and marshes. He attacked me on social media after Trump was elected because I made several posts critical of Trump and those who voted for him. I blocked my cousin in 2015 and have only spoken to him briefly once since, at my sister-in-law's funeral.

My aunt, his mother, called me about a week ago to tell me he was hospitalized with Covid, proned, on supplemental oxygen. We spoke for a long time and she told me he was anti-vax, didn't believe Covid was that bad and had practically disowned her because she had voted for Joe Biden and was critical of Trump. She told me his wife and teenage son also have covid but were, so far, suffering only moderate symptoms.

At this point, I have no sympathy for adults, even family members, who have chosen to join a cult of arrogant ignorance when it comes to this disease. They have sided with conspiracy theorists and an extremist political party that is actively marching its adherents into hospitals and graveyards. Every social media post about Covid-19 and the Delta variant is filled with hundreds of comments from these morons who espouse lies and easily disproven conspiracy theories about a virus that has killed over 630,000 Americans and sickened tens of millions.

Every story I read by a former anti-vaxxer who now sees the error of their ways makes me want to vomit. They are all the same; they didn't give a shit about anyone but themselves until they got sick. Their attitude was, "I didn't believe in this disease or that micro-chipped, sterilizing vaccine invented by Bill Gates. Fuck everyone else in this country who is sick and dying, I won't do the simplest things to alleviate this pain and suffering because...Freedom!" until they can't breathe and need government-subsidized healthcare. The GofundMe pages they and their families put up after they are in the hospital on life support or dead are the ultimate in arrogance and hypocrisy. What happened to self resiliency and pulling yourself up by your boot-straps and Ayn Rand's ecomomic philosophy?

We no longer have animal predators to thin the evolutionary human herd. As this planet's resources become more scarce and we literally light the atmosphere that supports our existence on fire, I believe the planet is fighting back. Our world is a living organism, dependent upon an ecosystem that is balanced upon interdependency and natural cycles. Human beings have decimated these natural checks and balances and we now face the consequences.

Much like our bodies react to a hostile virus by creating and sending antibodies to attack, raising our temperatures to kill off invaders, and reacting violently by coughing, shaking, and purging deadly intruders, the earth is responding similarly. This rapidly changing virus is one of many attempts, I believe, of our planet trying to remove a parasitoid that threatens its very existence. Global climate change is another.

The irony of humanity is that we are intelligent enough to override the natural systems but too arrogant to use our knowledge to build a planet that is safer and more ecological because we value convenience and hubris over doing the right thing. We have created a world where food, shelter, clothing, and water are abundantly available to most of the planet's 7 billion-plus inhabitants. Scientists and doctors have created safe and efficient medicines that reduce mortality and extend life expectancy. We know that our actions are harming the planet and accelerating the demise of the ecosystems that sustain life.

In our world today, I believe that this virus is an evolutionary test for those who have easy, unlimited, and cost-free access to a safe, effective, and free vaccine (i.e. Americans). People will either accept and believe the voluminous medical and scientific data about this virus and the efficacy of the vaccine which can stop it or will continue to reject it and we will all suffer the consequences of their abject arrogance and ignorance. This is no longer an uncontrollable pandemic, it is a pandemic of the selfish and irresponsibly unvaccinated who refuse to join a community of compassion and selflessness. As a result, I no longer have the time, money, or sympathy to offer to the anti-vax bacchanalian holdouts who put themselves, their selfish wants, and unabashed obtuseness before their country and countrymen.

According to Darwin's Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. When it comes to anti-vaxxers and their inability to adjust to a changing environment, I have lost my desire or ability to hold them in anything but contempt. To quote Dickens, "If they would rather die, they had better do it and reduce the surplus population."

[hlthe2b]

1. As compassionate as I believe most HCWs to be--after 18 mos and COVID-deniers spitting, cursing

physically assaulting them while trying to treat them or their family members, I can tell you that I understand fully. We've had some DUers call out the posts detailing the sick and very public figures among the RW anti-vaxxer Pro-Trump COVID-deniers as though we here are celebrating death. I'm here to say I've seen enough death of those who tried to do the right things that my empathy is stretched to the max in terms of my understanding of the willfully ignorant and combative. So too are my colleagues.

It isn't that we want ANYONE to die, but the abuse and horrors those working in the hospitals across this country have faced have left us deplenished.. I'm not sure there are stores of empathy available to replenish us either. Lives are being destroyed daily and needlessly. It is hard to watch. Even harder to try to fight hour after hour after hour every day.

And for what? To pwn the Liberals?

[Mortos]

4. I don't know how HCWs

...continue to operate in the hateful, combative environment Trump and his minions have created. If you are in the trenches, you have my undying respect and gratitude. To deal with patients and family members who are deniers has to take a toll. I don't want to be hateful and lose my sense of compassion but I am done with those who actively contribute to and lengthen this pandemic unnecessarily. I honestly think our country and world will be better off without them.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

33. Hopefully

As more rwnj's die our population of sociopaths and narcissists goes down.

The world will be better without so many dark triad assholes in it.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Thank you for this great essay, my dear Mortos.

I agree completely with what you've written here.

Adapt, or die. That is the choice and so many people seemingly cannot do it.

[multigraincracker]

3. I think you are right and

we may have past the point of no return.

[Croney]

5. I'm expecting the same news any day now.

I have 33 relatives in Louisiana, from 98 years old to two months old. I believe at least half are vaccinated. If the others get Covid, they'll try to keep it a secret from me, at least until they're dead.

I just hate the risks they are forcing on the children.

[Diamond_Dog]

6. We read story after story of virus deniers/trump acolytes

Ending up very sick in the hospital - and worse.
What does it take to get the truth past their thick skulls?
My heart breaks for all of you with stubborn family members who refuse to see the truth.

[yardwork]

7. I understand your feelings.

I had to cut off my childhood best friend last year after years of Trump-cult emails attacking me with vile misogynistic, racist, and homophobic words and personal attacks against me and my family. I finally told him not to write to me again and he ran to his 90-year old parents and his sister complaining that I was "canceling" him and demanding that they cut off contact with me (they didn't; they're heartbroken at what he's become.)

On reflection, the seeds of his selfishness, cruelty and arrogance were always there. He was imperfect, like all of us. He could have become a better person. Instead he became what he is.

[MLAA]

12. I am sorry you had to experience this.

You certainly handled it the best way. I am a firm believer now in shun and shame the unvaccinated (expect for true medical reasons). I laid into my brother, no holds barred a few days ago after my dad became ill and because my brother wasn’t vaccinated he could not help, despite living a reasonable drive distance away. It meant I had to make an emergency flight to covid headquarters in Florida putting myself and health compromised husband at risk whenever I can return home. I laid into him when he asked ‘ how can I help’ about getting the fucking vaccine if he ever wants to see dad again or go to his funeral. When he texted me saying ‘get some rest’ I said I can live without rest but I can’t live with catching covid because idiots won’t get vaccinated and I might go home and kill my wonderful husband. The next day the idiot got vaccinated.

He won’t be protected for another 5 weeks, so no help to dad or me now. But hopefully he won’t kill anyone with covid.

[Irish_Dem]

8. You are on the mark. One of my professors was an expert in modern adaptability theory.

I have not thought about him for years, but your post brought his lectures up front and center in my mind.

This long time professor of psychology was a true genius, a beloved professor at a large American midwest Big Ten flagship school. He was an American, but his PhD was from the Sorbonne (France). He developed a well known adaptive behavior scale around the notion of adaptability as a more accurate measure of intelligence, which at the time was ground breaking.
He lived long enough to witness the DSM (the psychiatric diagnostic manual) mandate the use of adaptability scales in the evaluation of the intellectually handicapped.

His belief was that we should measure not just pure intelligence, but also a person's adaptability. He thought adaptability was a better measure of an individual's survival and ability to function in society.

His belief was that the core principal of survival is not pure intelligence or strength. It is the ability to adapt to our environment. He was very clear on the subject. He was very clear, all living beings must adapt to their current environment or face extinction.

I wish he were still alive to comment upon the current Covid situation. But we can guess what he would say.

[jmbar2]

9. Well-stated!

Years ago, in my first semester at college, I took a course on Ecology where we studied a very depressing analysis predicting today's multiple nested crises - climate, population, overuse of resources, etc.

The Guardian just published an article where modern data crunchers have reassessed the study, and found it to accurate in predicting our modern crises. It is a sobering read.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/gaya-herrington-mit-study-the-limits-to-growth

Perhaps Covid is the extinction event we need to get rid of the knuckledraggers, and to change course away from worldwide destruction.

I just worry that Antiva will take out my sister, who is a healthcare worker. She is also fed up.

[Farmer-Rick]

20. Wow, what an interesting article

Thanks for posting.

You can't help but wonder if global climate change is what caused the pandemic. There may not be direct evidence but this study links the 2 and suggests cause and effect.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01303-y

[jmbar2]

21. I think there is a case to be made

I hope that the bleakness of it all doesn't discourage folks from trying to make the changes that we need. It may take a mass die-off to get there.

[NNadir]

10. It is ironic that Fux News is killing its viewership and the Republican Party its voting base.

I guess they're nowhere near as clever as they think themselves.

[Tommymac]

11. Great thoughts except for personifying the Earth.

The Earth is rocks and magma and gases and liguids and plasma and biomass held together by physics and fields...it is NOT a conscious being.

Though at times serendipity make make it seem so, Mother Nature is not a real person or intelligence. It just is what it is.

Sorry, had to point that out as it does weaken your argument.

[Mortos]

22. I don't think I wrote anything about the earth being a conscious being

I don't think our planet is sentient. I do think that there is a scientific basis for believing the earth is a bio-organism that has a natural system that responds to threats to its existence. There is a growing body of scientific thought that the earth is alive. The Gaia hypothesis, conceived by chemist James Lovelock in the 1970s, which was initially panned and even mocked by a large swath of the scientific community, is getting a second look and new respect.

“It’s definitely time to revisit Gaia,” said Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. Some scientists even agree that the planet is in a very meaningful sense alive. “Life is not something that happened on Earth, but something that happened to Earth,” said David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute. “There is this feedback between the living and nonliving parts of the planet that make the planet very different from what it would otherwise be.” As Dr. Margulis wrote, “Earth, in the biological sense, has a body sustained by complex physiological processes. Life is a planetary-level phenomenon and Earth’s surface has been alive for at least 3,000 million years.” (The Earth is Just as Alive as You and Me, NY Times, 2019)

I disagree with your opinion that the hypothesis that the earth is alive weakens my argument but I appreciate your feedback.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/amazon-earth-rain-forest-environment.html#:~:text=Some%20scientists%20even%20agree%20that,a%20very%20meaningful%20sense%20alive.&text=Margulis%20wrote%2C%20%E2%80%9CEarth%2C%20in,at%20least%203%2C000%20million%20years.%E2%80%9D

The Gaia Hypothesis:

https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

[KPN]

24. To the butterfly, a Sequoia tree seems and

therefore is inert. Something I heard Carl Sagan once say in explaining his belief that the planet is not unlike an organism.

[Botany]

13. I hope you are able to speak with your cousin but if not I understand. Some people are beyond hope.

[Mortos]

38. This picture reminds me of this movie

[link:|

[Warpy]

14. I still have some compassion for them

because I've seen the power of horseshit when horseshit is all people hear at church, from their friends and neighbors, and online, thanks to Zuckerberg.

I've spent my life seeing various acquaintances fall down rabbit holes and most never got out of them. They weren't bad people, they were just people who needed purpose and certainty and often someone to look up to who'd tell them what to think and do.

As for this virus being some sort of evolutionary step, forget it. It's not asking to see IQ or political acumen or anything else, it is striking at random. It's also not an efficient killer. It might yet mutate into one, but it's not there yet.

Taken individually, all humans are pretty stupid and I put myself into that category. It's only when we cooperate that we turn smart. If anything, this is now set to weed out a few of the ones who won't cooperate, they're too ruggedly individualistic. It's just nog toing to nail enough of those to make a difference, so as an evolutionary tool, so far it's a flop.

[dianaredwing]

19. I have to take issue

Very few of these people have absolutely no opportunity to get news and facts from other sources. Very few are quarantined within colonies where there is only the one leader and only one set of 'facts.' Why did Jim Jones leave for the jungle? Therefore, they are willfully deciding to not accept any information outside of their cult.

Likewise, I don't imagine that all of our ancient ancestors suvived the evolutionary process equally. Those who are 'woke' certainly seem to have a better chance of survival than those who are not. Not 100%, but what is 100%?

We have an enormous advantage over past humanoids in that we can actually view the arc of environmental and ecological history. Again, not 100%, but odds are (and a great many people gamble in one form or another otherwise we wouldn't get up in the morning) that unless we actively acknowledge and ameliorate the causes of our current climate catastropy we won't have to worry about the political ramifications of idiots like tfg for very long.

[PatSeg]

15. Sadly, that Dickens quote has popped

in my head many times in the past year.

[dianaredwing]

16. Congratulations

That is the most succinct essay about the many problems we face as humans that I have read so far. I would say I am sorry about your cousin, but the truth is I am not. Sympathy is an emotion that we will need to depend on in the future and I don't want to waste any of it now. For some reason I think of Grapes of Wrath.

Hang in there, I think you are a survivor.

[Jon King]

17. I have no compassion because they affect my kid's future.

This is no longer about tax cuts or policy issues. Their decisions directly affect my loved ones. Its about a cult of people who deny climate change and deny vaccine science.

Bottom line is they are destroying our children's future. If one came up to my kids and tried to attack them, I would end them in a second.

Same philosophy here, the more of them that croak, the better off my kid's futures will be.

[duhneece]

18. 'tho in New Mexico now, husband from Coushatta, family in Shreveport

His 74 year old twin was shot and paralyzed from the chest down at 32. He got his vaccine first as did the rest of the family there in Coushatta…. but he says Covid is running rampant there. We’re concerned about the’Lamda (sp?) variant in northern Louisiana.
My husband is super worried… with his twin and a new great-grandson born in Shreveport last Tuesday.
We’re in a Republican, low-vaccinated county and I’m already wanting to rebel against the idea that I’ll have to quit exercise/dance classes after 14 months and 25 extra pounds. Sigh.

[Upthevibe]

23. Mortos....

Thank you for your well thought-out summary.

[Wild blueberry]

25. Adapt or die

Thank you for a superb essay.

[Martin Eden]

26. The former GOP has become America's Pro-Death Party

And it's not just COVID:

Anti-healthcare

Against regulations to limit poisonous toxins in our our, water, land, and food

Climate change denial

Pro-gun, as the slaughter of innocents keeps piling up

Pro-life?

Hardly. Outlawing abortion would drive it underground, making it more dangerous for poor women who can't afford to travel where it's safe and legal.

Heaven forbid we should focus instead on improving our schools, empowering women, and expanding access to health services including contraception.

TFG has taken the worst aspects of American "conservatism," turned up the volume with incessant lies small and large, and turned the right side of the aisle into a cult.

A death cult, that is.

[Evolve Dammit]

27. I agree with your sentiment, and "basket of deporables" was kind. Far beyond that.

[applegrove]

28. Vibes to your whole family but especially your cousins.

[Baked Potato]

29. Thanks for taking the time to write this nice essay. Nt

[dalton99a]

30. Kick

[PCIntern]

31. Simply: yes. Exactly. Thanks!

[liberal_mama]

32. I live in New York State, but my husband's family lives in Louisiana

They are anti-vax, covid deniers, and Trump supporters. I told my husband to call them to warn them about how bad it is in Louisiana right now, but he said if he called, they would just laugh at him. I'm glad the Louisiana governor reinstated the indoor mask mandate. Maybe that will save some people from this terrible virus.

I have a friend in South Carolina (unvaccinated) who has Covid really bad right now. She tried to get medical attention this morning, but she said the urgent care was packed and no one would help her. She said the staff was incompetent, but I think they are just overrun. I'm waiting to hear an update.

[SoCalDavidS]

35. She Said The Staff Was Incompetent?

I'm 100% sure they thought the same about her.

[liberal_mama]

36. Yep, she said they seemed like they had no common sense, but I think they were probably just swamped

I just got an update from my friend. She's got Covid pneumonia and has been admitted to the hospital. I really wish she would have gotten the vaccine or at least worn a mask/taken precautions because she is very overweight and has other risk factors. She has been running around maskless, eating at restaurants, and she went to a crowded movie theater last week.

Meanwhile, my mother called and said my aunt went to a birthday party (about 20 people) and now 6 people from the party are sick with Covid. This delta variant is highly contagious and people are acting like the pandemic is over. My aunt is 82, so hopefully she didn't catch it.

[SoCalDavidS]

37. They Have NO Control Now

It's completely out of their control.

The vaccines give you an immense amount of control, over the ultimate outcome if you contract the virus.

They have to rely upon the Doctors & Nurses at this point, because once it's out of their control too, the result is usually a done deal.

[Skittles]

34. I also wonder how many people they pass the virus on to before they, well, pass

they are indeed selfish fucking morons