Tri-County News

It’s all how you look at it


Jean Matua “From the Heart”

There is no question that Thanksgiving and Christmas (and the period from now until after New Year that we collectively refer to as “the Holidays”) will be very different this year from any other year.

For nearly 3,000 families in Minnesota (as of Monday this week), a loved one cannot partake of the festivities because he or she has died of COVID-19. Many more must be absent because they are ill or quarantined. These are the stark realities of the pandemic in which we find ourselves today.

In listening to discussions (and watching them on social media), it is clear that our current generations – my age and younger – do not know anything about group sacrifice for the good of all.

100 years ago, during the two-year Influenza pandemic, people mostly cooperated and pulled together for the common good, even though they didn’t know what they were dealing with. (There was not yet the technology to see a virus, much less fight it.) During other historic plagues, people willingly laid low in order to protect themselves and others.

During World War I and II, and during the Great Depression in-between, families donated metal to be used to make cannons and other weapons of war. They used ration books to purchase essentials like flour and sugar or butter. They pooled resources and took care of one another.

Then came the 1950s and the age of conspicuous consumption. Keeping up with the Joneses. Owning things for the prestige they bring. That, I believe, was a crucial turning point.

By the time the Vietnam War came along, people in our country were too divided against each other (and the war) to effectively do much together, except protest.

Jump to 2020 and we are in a real mess with nearly uncontrolled COVID-19 wreaking havoc. While many are doing their best to keep their little corners safe and healthy – disinfecting, masking, distancing – we have some who simply refuse to.  They don’t want to be told what to do. They don’t want to be inconvenienced. They think it’s all a [Russian, Chinese, anarchist, partisan, religious, Communist, or insert any conspiracy theory group here] plot to control people’s behavior and turn them into government-run zombies. Or something.

They clearly don’t understand what it means to sacrifice a little for the very survival of the many. After so many months of this, our healthcare workers are frazzled and nearly spent, yet they continue to fight in the trenches – fighting for all of us, including the ones who can’t bring themselves to cooperate for the common good.

I will make another plea – perhaps in vain, yet I must – to follow the guidelines of scientists and public health officials whose life’s work is to know these things: stay home if you can (especially if you feel sick), keep socially distant, wash your hands, mask up in public, and be kind to one another. Please?

This is the only way to change our situation, by following data-driven guidelines. It’s our only hope at this point (short of letting millions of people die of it).

It really is all how you look at it. It’s either “You can’t tell me what to do.” Or it’s, “Let me do my part to help save us all and end this sooner so we can all get our lives back.” The choice truly is yours.

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