Dear Covid

 Hey covid,

Today is September 12th, 2021 and long past time you knock it off. It’s no secret that I hate you. You are cruel and small all at once. You are evil and mean. You rob people of time. You are stealth like, taking air from some and allowing others to breathe you into a room with no knowledge you are there. You make experts question everything and you’ve made fools believe they know it all. 

Kudos, covid.  Seriously, it was amazingly wise of you to pick your first target so well. You knew humans would value economies over people. Young over old. Strong over weak. You knew that your first victims had to be who our society would willingly sacrifice in order for you to have more time. You knew we’d lay our older and sicker people at your feet while going about our lives, because, well, we love a good party. You knew as we watched old and sick people die, we’d be convinced that you weren’t coming for anyone else. You bet against us and played that hand well. 

You also picked a great time in history. An already crazy election year in modern day America was bloody brilliant. For real, it was bloody and brilliant. You predicted Americans would blame each other for deaths instead of blaming you. You knew Americans wouldn’t have a unified team approach against you. You knew we’d make this “us vs them” and somehow you managed to not be on either side. Americans have the need for power.  Knowing you are real comes with a side of humility acknowledging a lack of total control over you. Those who crave power, they deny you the most. Well played. It’s an interesting approach as I watch who is dying in this story. At first you were killing republicans and democrats. We both know that’s changed. Look at how individual counties voted either red or blue and compare that with vaccines and death rates. You definitely convinced one group to die in your honor conflating you with freedom. Their lives just a number to you, because all you need is more time. Time for you to allow conspiracy theories to build and become more complex, while you do the same. Impressive. 

Then you mutated on us. I see you everywhere. My co workers are so tired. I don’t mean sleepy, I mean, their hearts, my heart is tired. Tired of you, covid. Tired of your coughs echoing through the halls. Tired of bipaps and high flow oxygen machines. Tired of being yelled out for a “fake” diagnosis. Tired of people begging to be saved and apologizing for their decisions. Tired of watching people die. Tired of providing grief information for more children who lost a mom or dad. 

You knew if you waited long enough to attack younger adults, people would be too fatigued to change their own behavior. You thought about how quickly Americans lost the unity of September 12th, 2001. You calculated correctly we wouldn’t care about anything for long, even when that anything is each other. 

If you were standing in front me, I’d punch you. If you were something I could control, I’d kill you. I’d bleach wipe the hell out of you, lock you in a dumpster, set you on fire and throw you into an oil well along with all my PPE. At that point, I wouldn’t even try to convince anyone anymore of how real you were. I’d just let you die and when you were extinct, I’d let them have their false beliefs.  

Truth is, I have to reconcile something that my heart and mind are struggling with. You possess none of the human like qualities I want to assign to you. While you are very real and dangerous, you aren’t a planner. You aren’t actually cruel or stealth like. You didn’t pick an election year and you aren’t brilliant. You, dear covid, are just a virus. No emotions. No thoughts. Just a bug, that has revealed some of the biggest wounds the human race has. You exposed the worst in us. The fragility. The lack of control. The need to have someone to blame. The heart of people who will not love their neighbors, if they perceive love will cost them something. The mortality of us all. Everything that’s terrible about you covid, is really just a reflection of what’s terrible about people. You aren’t human, we are.

There’s more though, covid. I’ve learned things from you. I’ve learned coping skills are amazing, but inadequate. I’ve learned the difference in self care and self comfort. I trust no one who refuses to wear a mask. It used to be difficult to discern who would love their neighbors, but you, covid, have made that easy. I now understand what it means to pray all the time. I’ve felt actual joy when someone gets better. I have grief stricken faces seared into my mind as I’ve held the Ipad screen close to you, inside of a dying body.  I want to assign you human qualities because you were present at these deaths, in the cries of their loved ones. You were there as lungs couldn’t expand, you created the problem. Yet, you feel nothing. You aren’t joyful when people live or sad when they die. You are just a terrible virus. 

Covid, here’s what you can’t reflect. Goodness. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Love. As I watch a nurse start an IV, a doctor listen to a heartbeat, a social worker offer encouragement, or the code team pump on someone’s chest, I see people trying to save people. Every time someone gets vaccinated, I imagine a little fire hose putting out your flame. When I see a person with a mask on, I whisper a prayer of gratitude. I love epidemiologists mapping and trying to make people as safe as possible.  Have you watched those amazing pharmacist who won’t stop because surely, there is a way to stop your havoc? Helpers pushing back against you, at great cost to them. 

You see covid, just like September 11th fades away every year and Americans go about their lives, we carry scars and grief. Thankfully, there are people who still work for the good of their neighbors in the face of terrible things. Sadly, you are just one of those things. There will be more. The death toll for Americans on September 11th was staggering.  Covid, if we calculate the human loss for you in this country, it would be like America woke up and experienced September 11th for 251 days and counting. What America needs now is September 12th. We need 251 September 12ths. We desperately miss that unity. We need to recognize it’s always been us versus you. It’s never been us versus anything else.  The human race is on the same team. Individual team members are either helping or they are hurting this fight, but we are fighting from the same team. I have to believe we are coming for you covid. We may have to drag some of our teammates along, but if they survive, it will be worth it. They may always deny you or that they could have died. That’s just history on repeat, we both know people who deny details of September 11th, but that doesn’t change the fact that so many people died. People don’t have to believe you exist. You are real and we will never be the same. It would be amazing to see how effective a unified team approach could be against you. 

Perhaps the real miracle, the real cure, would be to love each other again. To make America be kind and lead the way in this fight against you. To distribute the vaccine to the world and all of us take it too. If we would wear our masks because it just may help. If, as a team of humans, we fought you together, with a fierce love for our neighbor that won’t be deterred, we’d win. 

The greatest miracle is always love. If we all really loved each other we’d beat you for sure. Not that you’d care about the defeat at all, but us humans, we’d celebrate, with a great big party. 

Same team humans, come on, it’s September 12th…let’s do this…together.