COVID-19 ain’t over yet — let’s not pretend it is

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Sunny South News

COVID is just another word really, and the number 19 — is well, just another number.

As 9/11 has become synonymous with tragedy and a shift in the world’s consciousness and resolve — so to, has COVID-19 become a part of today’s every day vernacular. A word and number, collectively, that has created a divide internationally and domestically. Of course, there has always been the fear of the number 13 and its associations. And in history, there was the plague or Black Death that struck fear in the heart’s of men, women and children.

Onomatophobia, according to dictionary.com, is an abnormal dread of certain words or names because of their supposed significance. According to the Interweb, the fear of numbers is called arithmophobia. “This fear is somewhat unusual, in that, it encompasses a wide-variety of specific phobias, including a generalized fear of all numbers and fear of specific numbers.” It is also sometimes called numerophobia, according to online wordsmith definers.

Today, COVID-19 and its varied incarnations has gripped nations tightly around the neck in a chokehold not seen since the many health-related monstrosities over the ages — which, by the way, many were taken out by vaccines. But, COVID-19, on its own — is just a scientific name given to an unrelenting and diabolical villain. So, why does this sinister sounding label have such a significance in 2021 and will the moniker continue to represent such a terrible time in the early 2020s?

Edgar Allan Poe said, “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” Indeed COVID is a horror in this reality. It kills indiscriminately, it frightens and terrorizes young and old, it makes people do stupid and crazy things, and it seems to be a never-ending story, at this point in time.

According to “The Encyclopedia of Misinformation,” there’s a word for the science of creating stupidity and it’s called agnotology. It’s culturally constructed ignorance, usually manufactured by special interest groups to suppress facts and create confusion “It’s specious methodologies are often deployed in complex scientific issues, by sowing the seeds of doubt with inaccurate or misleading data.” Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Here’s an interesting tidbit for those who are struggling with the notion of having to get a vaccine. In the aforementioned book it states getting vaccinated is the ultimate gesture of community empathy. “This shared responsibility situates immunization in the same category as voting, recycling, and other gestures of social compassion.”

At the individual level, your participation won’t change the world, the passage continued — but, “we perform these civic acts as part of a larger ritual of participating in a cohesive society.”

“To show empathy, we take the needle,” it concluded.

So, what’s the problem? Well, many of today’s non-believers in vaccines are just not getting it. Like, not the premise and/or the actual needle. Sure, modern medicine has flaws, but it has also saved lives more often than not. There’s the old adage about getting a sign or help from a higher being — couldn’t a vaccine be that sign and/or help? Couldn’t modern medicine be the saviour, when the ills of society run rampant in the streets? It was, has been and will continue to aid us in the pursuit of living. For whatever reason a person decides not to do something for the common good, a law needs to be made or a regulation needs to be enforced. It no longer has anything to do with rights, freedoms, this and that.

If COVID-19 only affected YOU then there wouldn’t be a problem, but because COVID-19 can be transmitted to others (some with possible underlying issues with compromised immune systems and such) then, it becomes a WE problem. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘We.” Or, WE the People.

No one wants to wear a mask, no one wants to get a vaccine, no one wants to be told what to do and how to live — but, at times, society needs to take a deep breath, throw away the attitude and selfishness and take a hit for the collective team. WE are all supposed to be in this together, but the team becomes simply a few players vying for the spotlight, making it about THEM.

Good day.