jariesuicune

Sorry, we would ALL love to have Covid "just die", but that's just not how reality works. Ignoring anything doesn't make it go away, but it would let it run completely uncontrolled. My friend's dad died literally a week after finally being declared clear of cancer he had been fighting for years (and eventually hospitalized for), because so many people ignored Covid and let it spread to the level it was last winter, just before Christmas. Vaccines DO work, but not in the "magical protection of anime-senpai" way that so many people seem to believe they do/should. This is the real world, where all you can do is reduce the chances of something happening, not make it magically impossible to happen. What a vaccine does is basically increase your resistance to that particular virus. Seriously, you can think of this like (approximate) video game stats: -A normal person has a 5% resistance to infection and symptoms. They have a 95% chance of spreading the infection (not counting any protections such as masks, which reduce transmission chance by an average of 50% for BOTH receiving and spreading) -A vaccine gives that person +75% resistance to infection and symptoms. Unfortunately, every time the virus spreads, it slowly changes (gaining a +1% to ignoring resistance) to make it easier to ignore that resistance. THIS is why it feels like the vaccine "doesn't work", because everyone else is literally helping it to change enough to get around it. People not caring/believing is literally what is killing people. (Or because the people in question are largely just not vaccinated. It CAN'T do anything for a person that won't take it. Like, a shield can't protect a person standing 30 feet away from it with a gun point-blank at their face. That's just not how anything works!) Of course, that doesn't make it any easier to deal with, even without suffering it yourself. I know, I'm there too. I can't say I'm personally crazy about travel, but that's just me. And it would be wonderful to be able to just hang out with people again without fear that doing so is going to be the cause of my parents, grandparents, friends, THEIR parents, etc. next. But be glad you haven't suffered it, because there are just so very many people that share their story of suffering the consequences of not taking it seriously, and they mean suffering. And be glad you aren't the one who is responsible for causing the death of someone's loved one. I assume most people don't actually care about that (or else this pandemic would be handled far better), but selfless thoughts and actions are the only way something like this is going to improve. Selfishness will only spread and prolong the pain. In my job, I have to be extra careful, because I work with people that are especially at risk. If the virus gets into them, they are basically dead no matter what. So, yeah, I choose to care, no matter how difficult it is personally. But it makes it easier to deal with, knowing that I am helping make someone else's life both better and even having the chance to be alive.