It's Like the Sun

I missed this back in August, but, while I keep seeing Orwell and Huxley in everything around us, Tern saw Joseph Heller:

This is exactly the crazy-making that's going on. Tern is a priest and knows people who were dying of Covid, but their death certificate says anything but Covid. Instead it's pneumonia or a heart attack or anything else.

Just like with AIDS.

"It only looks like no one is dying of Covid because no one is saying that they're dying of Covid." 

Now some politicians are on about kids vaping which sends a few dozen to the hospital each year. It's harmful and gross and should be prevented, definitely, but Covid sends thousands of kids to the hospital, and we won't do anything to stop it. 

We don't mention Covid. It's too big. It's like the sun; you can't look directly at it. 

Henry Madison (aka Rage Sheen) offers a bit of comfort:

"If you feel despair about Covid, I think it helps to remember that everything you do as an individual to counter it is automatically multiplied many times over, even exponentially. No other social problem is that tractable to individual action. . . . You never know how many lives you save putting a mask on and avoiding infection. It can be thousands, interrupting chains of transmission. Plus the bloody economy, how it helps that too."

A commenter added an astute point: "Every single infection is a new Patient Zero." 

Let's maybe do our best to avoid being another in the millions of Patient Zeros walking around infecting others everywhere they go, shall we?