Life Lessons
I Miss Believing People Will Do the Right Thing
One more thing the pandemic has stolen from me
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
I grew up in the projects of Chicago, so I was never naïve. Childhood was an unaffordable luxury in that place. I fully understood the depravities humans can lower themselves to do. I know the lengths to which evil people will go to manipulate and hurt others. I ran away with a pimp when I was still a child, so I know how deceptive and hard-hearted people can be. I’m no Pollyanna.
Yet, I’ve always held a deep-seated feeling most people have an innate desire to do the right thing if given a chance. No matter the number of microaggressions or racism or deception I experienced, I always believed there were more good people than self-interested, manipulative people.
Now, I am not so sure. As we walk through this pandemic, we are not walking together. We are not caring about our neighbors; instead, some are only about themselves. Their rights and their freedoms. They don’t care about the immunocompromised or the small children who can not be vaccinated yet. They don’t care about the fourth coronavirus wave with rising deaths and hospitalizations. They do not care about the Delta variant of the virus.
That these people are about 50% of our nation makes my heart hurt. It makes me sad. What has happened to us that so many Americans won’t take a minor risk to help our country recover? We have a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The recent cases are 90% unvaccinated. The dying are 95% unvaccinated. The hospitalized are 99% unvaccinated. That unvaccinated pandemic puts all of our progress at risk because those infected with the virus could make even more dangerous variants than the Delta variant.
This post by an Alabama doctor says a lot:
“I’m admitting young, healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”
It takes their impending death for these misinformed Americans to wake up.
So, I no longer believe most Americans will do the right thing if left to their own devices. The pandemic has stolen that value from me like it stole fifteen months of my life. The unvaccinated will not easily do right. It is up to the rest of us to protect the vulnerable in any way we can. I’m in this group of protectors. I will maintain my dignity, values, and integrity as I insist the rest of our nation step up. But I am going to demand we protect our young ones. I hope you will too.
Toni Crowe retired as the Vice President of Operations to pursue her dream of being a writer. Toni has written six books, two of which won the 2019 Reader’s Choice Gold Awards. Her bestselling business book, “Bullets and Bosses Don’t Have Friends: How Do You Manage A Man Sitting With His Dick in His Hand?” was one of the winners. Her first book, “Never a $7 Whore” was the other.
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