A shot of guilt

 

   I got my first shot of the COVID-19 shot (the one from Pfiser) yesterday.  And I feel fine. 

   I mean, I feel physically fine.  My arm hurts just a bit – the antibiotic shots I got a while ago hurt more – but, other than that, I don’t have any of the side effects I’ve heard about.  No fever, no dizziness, no tiredness (at least no more than usual).

   And I feel tremendous relief, not having to worry about getting sick and probably hospitalized with the virus – a real danger with my disability. 

   But, ironically because of this, I don’t feel good psychologically. I feel guilty about being relieved and safe.  It’s something like survivor’s guilt. 

   The thing is, I’m not supposed to be able to get a shot at this time here in California.  I’m 61, and, currently, only those 65 and older, healthcare workers and residents of nurturing homes are eligible to get a shot in the state. 

   A friend got me an appointment at a hospital in Fontana, about 40 minutes away (a bit of a drive but worth it). I don’t quite know how he did it, but I think he said I’m in a care facility. 

   Which, in a sense, I am.  Yes, I live in my own home, but I have six attendants who come in shifts to provide the care that I need.  I feel confident that my attendants are taking great care not to get the virus, and they now wear masks when they are here, but this isn’t 100% protection with so many coming in and out of my house.  In fact, one attendant found out a roommate had or was exposed to COVID-19 shortly before Christmas and had to quarantine and couldn’t return to work here until well after New Year’s.

   Sure, you can say I’m in a home with staff coming in with possible exposure to COVID -19, but it’s a bit of a stretch. 

   Meanwhile, there are many disabled people, severely disabled people like me, who aren’t 65 or in nursing homes and who are wondering when they can get they the vaccine.  They are very worried about getting COVID-19 and perhaps ending up in the hospital, where, with so many in the hospital, it could be difficult getting the help they need and, because they are disabled, they could be low on the list when it comes to deciding who gets the limited care and equipment available.  Just like I was. 

   Yes, it’s great I got the vaccine, but it’s not fair. 

A terrorizing temper tantrum

 

   A few months ago, I wrote that President Trump’s avid supporters are not unlike those who carried out and supported the 9/11 attacks, in that they’ll do anything to stop progress, to keep things the way they are or were, to preserve their way of life and values. 

   For those who doubt this and need further proof, look at what happened Wednesday in Washington, D.C.  Thousands of people, spurred by a speech by Trump claiming again that he won the November election and encouraging them to march to the capitol building and “fight” the results, literally – and lethally - stormed and ransacked the building, interrupting congress’ basically pro forma counting of the electoral college ballots and declaring Joe Biden the winner. Not only was the “citadel of democracy” trashed, five people wound up dead. 

   There is much I can say about what happened Wednesday.  I can write about feeling vulnerable and beat up, like the marauding mob was trampling on me.  I can write about the terrible, bitter but all-too-familiar, all-too-American irony in the police force on Wednesday being pretty light and hands-off with the nearly all-white crowd while the mostly peaceful, multi-racial Black Lives Matter protesters last summer were met with militaristic, brute force and brutality.  I can write about how Trump, a sitting president who openly, criminally incited this raiding and trashing of democracy, should be put away or, at the very least, censured.   

   But my point here is that, as Biden and many others have said, this was no protest.  To say the very least, this was a huge temper tantrum by people not getting their way, not wanting things to change.  More than that, this tantrum by those not wanting the coming changes, was an act of vandalism, yes, but really an act of terror.  It was nothing like what the third 9/11 pane might have done, but it came from the same impulse. 

   And get this: the last time the U.S Capitol was attacked was when the British burned it – in 1812. 

Small blessings in a big year

 

   A nurse has been coming every day to give me a shot of an antibiotic.  It is for an urinary tract infection – either a new one or an old one that came back or keeps coming back.  I keep having uti’s lately, and I guess this is a bad one, bad enough that pills won’t do.  I don’t know.  When I texted my doctor last week saying that my urine looked bad, he didn’t answer.  Someone from the lab came and took a sample, and then someone from a pharmacy called and asked when the shots could be delivered. 

   As much as feel like an invalid with a nurse coming to the house, like when I came home after my spinal surgery almost four years ago, at least I’m not in the hospital.  Yay!  I was in the hospital for five days in October with, yes, an uti and wasn’t allowed to have my attendants with me to help with communication – a horrendous, torturous experience.  When I texted my doctor, I told him that I did not want to be in the hospital, all the more so with Christmas and New Year’s coming up and with the hospitals here in Southern California now full of COVID patients. 

   Yes.  You bet I’m grateful I’m not in the hospital.  And that I’ve only gone to the hospital twice since March – once just in the E.R – when COVID became an issue after going there once a month last year.  Yay, indeed! 

   It seems to me that this is a good metaphor as this year ends. This year which – I’ll just say it – has been pretty awful, no doubt the worse year of our lives, at least collectively.  After all, the last really bad pandemic was the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, just over 100 years ago – and at least we now have Zoom and streaming movies and shows, let alone television, thank God! 

   In such a year, I’m finding that I’m grateful for the smallest or most mundane things, like my doctor giving me antibiotics, even in shots, for an urinary tract infection so I don’t have to go to the hospital (and also find it ironic, if not funny, that I’m more afraid of getting an urinary tract infection than I am of getting COVID). I suspect we all are.  Hell, thank God indeed for television and Zoom and streaming movies!  We won’t be taking them for granted anytime soon – will we?       

   And thank God that 2020 is just about over.  Good riddance! 

Blind faith

 

   “You can’t see God, but he exists.”

   This quote, recently in the Los Angeles Times, is from a woman in Georgia who voted for Donald Trump, explaining her strong belief that Trump, not Joe Biden, won the election early this month.  Never mind that it was finally “ascertained” a couple days ago that Biden was indeed that winner and can have access to funds, information, office space, etc, to ensure a smooth transition, that may in fact save lives given the pandemic and national security, despite Trump’s continued grumbling that he won the election. 

   Yes, it’s definitely worth cheering Biden’s victory and that we won’t have another four years of Trump – at least until 2024 – but Biden is likely in for some tough sledding, with 71 million people having voted for Trump and a good number of them with this adamant belief, this adamant faith that Trump won and so Biden is an illegitimate president – not just “not my president” but not the president. 

·             *     *

 

   After starting off with two episodes dealing with COVID, the new season of The Good Doctor is back to business as usual, in a world without COVID.  This is just weird – and not just because COVID suddenly went away.  Television may be an escape for lots of people, but a show set in a hospital, of all places, not dealing with COVID, as depressing as those two episodes were, is...just weird. 

   Then there are all those commercials showing holiday gatherings…   

Desperate for their good ol' days

 

   It occurred to me recently that the people who like and are for President Trump, who now insist that the election was stolen from Trump and that he, not Joe Biden, will be inaugurated to a second term on January 20, are not unlike those who carried out or applauded the 9/11 attacks. 

   Stay with me here.  I know this sounds like an outrageous claim. I’m certainly not saying that the Trump backers are mass murderers – although some appear ready to commit violence if they don’t get their way.  And it does feel like they, along with Trump, are holding the nation hostage, in limbo, at this time. 

   But think about what both groups want – or don’t want. They don’t want to hear from those who don’t have the same beliefs, values or thinking that they do.  They don’t want to see and hear women who are liberated and in power or who have what they think is too much power or license.  They don’t want to see or hear gay and transgender or any queer people, and they certainly don’t want to see them getting rights and getting married.    

   Both the Trump supporters and the radical Islamists want things to be the way they used to be.  They want, desperately want to go back to a time, to a world where people who were different didn’t have rights or didn’t exist.  They are desperate to go back to when things were “simpler.”

   They see that the world is changing, see the writing on the wall, and they will do anything to stop this from happening, to go back to when everything was simpler. They will bomb buildings and even fly planes into buildings, killing thousands of people. They will vote for a millionaire, who clearly doesn’t have their interests at heart but who says what they want to hear.  They will say that an election is rigged or fraudulent when it clearly wasn’t if their candidate didn’t win, perhaps putting democracy itself at risk and certainly giving the world a horrible model. 

   I understand that my argument here is very broad.  For example, many, including a fair number of Blacks and Latinos, who voted for Trump liked the way he handled the economy, at least pre-COVID, and felt he would be better than Biden at handling it.  Not all who voted for Trump were white gun-toting people who think that wearing a mask is an intrusion on liberty, who tend to be racist if not white supremacists and who want to go back to the 1950’s when women stayed at home and gay people weren’t seen, but it has become clear that enough, more than enough, are.