20/20 to most of us brings to mind the description of perfect vision. Well apparently here in Australia, now that we're metric, it's been replaced by 6/6. I was quite disappointed by this news when I visited the optometrist recently when having my eyes checked but, as the mention of 2020 will, from now on, bring to mind a disaster of global proportions, I'll settle for 6/6.
This year will forever, if it were able, hang its head in ignominy. Its predecessor, 2019, after which the virus was named because the first infection was recorded then, will not suffer that fate because it was only in 2020 when we all became aware we were in the grip of a pandemic. 2019 is like someone looking the other way as if they were an innocent bystander to a crime rather than the perpetrator and letting the one standing beside it take the blame. We know you were the culprit 2019, we do, and don't think that just because 2020 has a nice ring to it, we will forget.
Looking back a century to 1919 there was also a global pandemic. Strangely it was not forever tarred with the brush of ignominy but that's because the four years that preceded it had already dished up such a serve of hideousness and mortality, that it was just the last straw.
This latest pandemic has brought out different reactions in people, ones that I doubt would have occurred in the last one. It has brought out conspiracy theorists as well as a sense of entitlement; those who feel their rights are being infringed by having to follow government issued edicts to protect everyone, such as the wearing of masks. These people have been more concerned with their freedoms, their right to chose what to do, than their safety. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they are destroying the rights of others by breathing their potentially infected vapour onto them. Perhaps they are redirecting their fear onto something they feel they can handle, such as the government, rather than facing something they cannot, death.
People all have different ways of coping but in a pandemic some of the real danger comes from those who cannot face reality. For many decades now mankind has eradicated most of the contagious diseases and at least two generations have grown up without Scarlet Fever, Polio, Smallpox and the like. The idea that a disease will sneak up on them and kill the young and healthy seems to be something out of history. The sense that there is really nothing out there to worry about has also given rise to the anti-vaxxers and because such people won't immunize their children there is a recurrence of childhood diseases such as Whooping Cough.
Earlier this year my son's Mother in Law asked me if I'd had a vaccine against Pneumonia after I mentioned that I'd had my flu shot and she wanted to know if I'd had the Pneumonia shot as well. I didn't know one existed but she did and she'd had it. It simply never occurred to me I would catch Pneumonia. In fact I thought it was a secondary infection you caught after the flu. Well I sure wish I had known because, while I was flitting around during the mid-year, shopping in a mask and staying home a lot (I'd lost my job due to lack of customers thanks to Covid anyway), I caught Pneumonia.
I went to my doctor for headache tablets and the receptionist checked my temperature but wouldn't let me inside as it was high. I had to get a Covid test first and go home and wait for the results before I could go back. A day later I received the good news that I didn't have Covid but by then I was bedridden. I didn't worry, it would pass, whatever it was. Two days later my son came around and called an ambulance. The hospital X-rayed me and told me I had a nasty case of Pneumonia and there I stayed for one week being pumped full of antibiotics and even anti-virals.
Six weeks later I only just felt human again but there is still the ever present threat of Covid and now my immunity isn't great. Thank heavens I live in Queensland and the government has protected us in spite of those who think they are immortal or that the economy comes first. I know the economy is vital but that really won't matter if there are no people left.
Other things have been going on around the world this year but everything pales in the face of the pandemic. It is almost like a sign directed at our progressed society that we can't fix everything and that we are still merely human.
As for those who think the disease is a conspiracy designed by governments worldwide to bring people under their control, I simply don't believe it. How could governments worldwide agree on this matter when they can't on anything else? People think the vaccine has something in it that will either track them or cause them to be a mindless followers or heaven knows what or that it will cause everything to be electronic, such as no more cash only cards, and that we will have no freedoms. I don't trust governments any more than the next person but I think that this has arisen because people are in denial about not being able to control a disease. We've come so far after all but what they forget is that we are mortal, biological beings.
I'm just happy to be alive now while once I used to feel confined by not having the money to travel, which now seems a questionable activity at best. We are far safer in Australia, at least thus far, than overseas. Europe went through the plague in the Middle Ages and life, well the life of those who didn't die, went on. The plague re-occurred regularly for a couple of centuries but still mankind prevailed even when there was no relief for those who were dying from it and no understanding about how it was caught.
It is the stupidity and arrogance of those who won't follow common sense rules that will continue to allow this virus to spread as well as those less effective governments who won't take the measures necessary to keep it under control. Perhaps nature is counting on this stupidity to alleviate the planet of our presence. We forget that it can take its revenge and the more we foul the earth, the more we will allow bacteria and viruses to flourish in the waste. I for one, however, would like to live to a ripe old age and see my grandchildren grow up in a sane world. What a shame there aren't viruses to make people more intelligent and responsible. We wouldn't need a vaccine for those.
END.
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