They HATE you so much, they are willing to die. But YOU are supposed to feel sorry for them.

[Politicub]

36. There was a letter to the editor in the newspaper from the small town I'm from. My mother

sends me a link to the digital edition each week, and it's a fascinating window to peer into the lives of people who are very unlike the city folk I'm accustomed to now.

The letter was from someone who was wondering if the paper could print the reason why so many obituaries are for people under the age of 60. The obits used to take up a page before Covid. At most, a page and a half. This week there were four pages, and the ages were divided evenly between those over 65 and those under 65. Four or more pages of obits has been typical for the past few months.

The editor-in-chief responded to the writer of the letter in his weekly editorial. He said that he contacted the hospital to see if they would give him a percentage or range of the number of people who died of Covid. The hospital wasn't able to give him a number, but told him that it should be easy for him to figure out.

The willfully unvaccinated do not care enough about themselves or their families to give a damn if they live or die. They know the stakes. The pastors of churches are opinion leaders in the community, and they have a degree of culpability. The people that forward misinformation through email or share posts on Facebook are culpable, too.

I'm not sure if what I feel is pity, but it certainly isn't mockery. If I had to characterize it, I would say it's more a feeling of apathy. I have no power to change the minds of people that have made their decision, so I don't spend energy doing that anymore. Facebook has turned into a cesspool of anti-vaxx propaganda, with a couple of pictures of my cousins' kids scattered among the posts about horse paste and Trump. I don't log in anymore since there's nothing to see, and I don't want to add my meager number to the average number of daily users of the service.

So, apathy. Yeah. That's what I'm feeling right now.