After 34 days of travel, holiday family time, and capped off with four days in Austin among hundreds of students in closed quarters, I came home and tested positive for Covid.
This is my second bout, the first coming in August 2021, when a new variant worked through the vaccine. Since then, I have boosted each time a vaccine became available. Even if I were twenty-seven instead of sixty-seven, I would do this.
Both times Paxlovid and a pain relief medicine for the fever have kept the case mild with no respiratory issues, and for that I am grateful.
Here are my candid and personal observations about this pandemic.
1. It still scares the hell out of me.
2. I do not live in fear but in healthy respect of what the virus does.
3. I was grateful that the former president put into motion Operation Warp Speed in May 2020 to fast track the development of the vaccine.
4. I grew appalled that, in the election year of 2020, the former president withheld information and then saw the virus as a weakness, missing a prime opportunity to guide us through difficult days. Instead, he mocked the virus, was more worried about his re-election chances than doing what was best for the country, and he helped make a villain out of a man who had served his country in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 38 years. To this day, I will never understand why and how that happened.
5. I am angry that something as serious as this pandemic was treated with political gloves and not scientific ones.
I am also angry with myself.
I opted not to wear a mask last week when in crowded closed rooms filled with people because I was afraid of what they would think and afraid of embarrassing my own students. So here I am sick again—and ashamed of my lack of courage to do what was best for my health.
In a few months, my daughter and son-in-law will once again ask me to get a whooping cough vaccine before the birth of my third grandchild. Why? Because it’s recommended if I am going to be in contact with him. It’s not the law. Just a recommendation. But as his parents, they will insist—and rightfully so.
Why can’t I say to people “Would you do this for me? Will you get the vaccine so that we can stifle this virus? If not, would you stay home if you are sick or maybe wear a mask if you think you have Covid?” Just as my grandson will need all the protection he can get, so do I. Not because I don’t trust God. But because I am also in a vulnerable demographic. That’s science, not politics.
When the next pandemic comes, I fear we will do this song and dance all over again rather than learn from the historic medical events of the past four years. Chances are we will bow up, thump our chests, and defy medicine because that is what has been modeled, especially in Texas, since March 2020.
I would feel so much better if we would let history make house calls.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears regularly in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
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