A Little Jab'll Do Ya

40,000 children under the age of 18 in the United States have now lost *at least* one parent to COVID-19.

All:  get vaccinated.  For yourself, to be here for your children (and/or fur children!), and literally for all of humanity.  It will take most of us getting vaccinated to stop this thing.  The two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) have proven to be very, very (amazingly) effective and safe.

I personally, while definitely NOT an "anti-vaxxer", am a critical consumer of vaccines, as well as of all pharmaceuticals.  I am not on ANY prescriptions, which is highly unusual (sad to say, since it shouldn't be!) for an American, period, let alone for an American over age 40.  Because I ask questions and I say no to things.  I don't even usually get a flu shot, because I take elderberry, strategically, during flu season.  So I'm not one to just blindly jump on a vaccine bandwagon and ride, Sally, ride.  But on the COVID-19 vaccines, YES, I am 100% gung ho.

Why?  Because if we don't box this thing in, giving it nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, we will never get out of THIS.  As in, this last year-plus that we've all lived through.  We will never get back to anything resembling, as I heard someone so poetically and poignantly put it a while back, "The Before Times".

Twitter version:  get your COVID-19 vaccination, for goodness sake.  I've got one dose of Pfizer on board and cannot wait for my second (but I will wait, and get it at the 21-day mark).  I don't have human children, much to my own sadness.  But I was still first in line the nanosecond I became eligible.  For ALL the children of the world!  If one has children of one's own, I can't imagine that one hesitating for a moment, as two little jabs in the arm (one, with J & J, but personally, I'd go--and did/am going--with Pfizer...but I digress) will ensure that you are here for them.

My fellow Americans: we have no President. If we are going to stop COVID-19, *we* have to stop COVID-19.

All: here's what we are faced with, and here's what we need to do:

First, we must realize that we have no President. If we are going to stop the COVID-19 virus, *we* are going to have to stop the COVID-19 virus.

Second, we must realize: we have three tools at our disposal. Those three tools are as follows: practicing extreme physical distancing ideally or at least good physical distancing, washing our hands with hot water and soap, and wearing masks. Let's look briefly at each of these three tools:

1. Practicing physical distancing: stay *at least* 6 feet away from other humans. Easier said than done, but do your level best. For me, as an essential worker who thus has been reporting to work full-time throughout this thing, the hardest part is dealing with the percentage of people who are one or both of two things: actively hostile to this whole thing, and/or utterly ignorant/oblivious about it. Those are the challenging people to keep your distance from, as no matter how gentle and gracious you may be in attempting to distance from them, they can and do get hostile, offended and/or they often come barreling right up to you even as you are FLEEING in the opposite direction. All I can say is: do your best. Do your best and look at it like being a defensive driver: you always want to keep space, a buffer zone, between you/your car and others on the road. Sometimes you have cars driven by road-ragey drivers, sometimes you have cars driven by whatever type(s) of wackadoodles, but you just have to do your best to keep yourself and others safe. Keep that buffer zone, whenever, wherever and however you can.

2. Washing your hands with HOT water and soap. COVID-19 has a thin, easily destroyed lipid (fat) layer on it. Soap makes short work of destroying it, thereby disabling the virus. You want to wash your hands any and every time you think you may possibly have come into contact with COVID-19 with hot water and soap (any kind of soap--I use a cheap, mild coconut shampoo actually as a hand soap at home--it's got the same ingredient as "soap").

3. Wearing a mask. Folks, let me tell you something: I literally can't stand doing this, but I've come to understand that, what with the whole aforementioned no President thing, it's the most powerful tool, along with physical distancing which is my personal fave (but then, I'm an INFJ, so I'm quite possibly biased :) ), that we have. I hasten to add at the outset that I am very aware and sensitive to the fact that there are people out there with physical challenges who really cannot wear a mask. There are burn victims, there are people who just had surgery (next week, I'm getting a mole that came back as abnormal after a biopsy removed and will need stitches on my cheek, and I'm worried that I might have trouble with wearing a mask for a week or two after that, as I am required to at work), and there are people like me with structural ENT issues wherein they can't breathe with a mask on, and there are people with asthma, etc. So most thoughtful, sensible, humane and sane mask ordinances, such as the one that our thoughtful, sensible, humane and sane mayor here in St. Petersburg, Rick Kriseman, implemented, have provisions that make allowances for people who truly would suffer some type(s) of physical distress from wearing a mask. But for the vast majority of us, including myself who *does* have a physical problem due to a severe ENT situation that I won't get into here, but suffice it to say that it is very hard, to impossible at times, for me to breathe with the mask on, need to suck it up, buttercup, and don the damn thing. Why? Because if all of those of us who can wear one, do wear one every time we are in shared indoor spaces (and crowded outdoor spaces), for even just a couple of months, we could knock this virus into submission. Stop it in its tracks.

So that's where we are: we have no President, or worse, actually, we have a treasonous sociopath for a President--so it's way worse than if we had no one at the helm, and when it comes to COVID-19, he's basically abdicated all responsibility as a leader, become the Denier in Chief, and also decided to take on the role of Super Spreader Events Planner. That leaves us to do the three things--use the three tools--discussed above to stop COVID-19. Are we up for it? Or will it take another 136,000 Americans to die, the equivalent of more than two entire Vietnam Wars, in terms of American casualties?

It's up to us.