I want this pandemic to end. With approaching 700,000 US dead, lives are ripped apart, I lose sleep fretting. Angry folks lash out. I don’t blame them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was raised in a Christian community. My family on one side is Dutch Reformed Calvinist. On the other, German Lutheran. They argued, although, as I see them now, they agreed on much more than they disagreed. Me, I’m a perennial student. I’ve read tons of theology and history from and about past centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All this study has given me a desire to treat my neighbors as I want them to treat me. I could’ve learned that from a ham-handed educational film on the Golden Rule that the teachers exhibited every year or so to stuffy darkened rooms of whispering and restless grade-schoolers at North Bellingham Elementary School. I would’ve saved myself years of time and trouble if I’d paid attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve read enough Covid-19 research literature to see that the doctors and scientists are still struggling to learn to mitigate or end the pandemic. The best recommendations today may change tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not a scientist or a physician. There’s nothing I can do in that line. If I had my life to live over, I might become an epidemiologist or a biochemist. But I’m seventy-two years old. Fat chance of change now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m one person without expertise or power. I cannot change the course of the disease or the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All medicines have risks, but the risk of vaccination today is tiny compared it to the pain and chaos around me. I’m brave enough for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Masking is ugly and uncomfortable, but it slowed the 1918 flu pandemic and has slowed Covid-19 in places where it is practiced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all boils down to how I want to treat others and others to treat me. I want everyone to do what they can to end the pandemic. Will a jab in my the arm and mask end the pandemic? Of course not. But the jab and mask are the two things I can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s why I’m vaccinated and wear a mask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want this pandemic to end. With approaching 700,000 US dead, lives are ripped apart, I lose sleep fretting. Angry folks lash out. I don’t blame them. I was raised in a Christian community. My family on one side is Dutch Reformed Calvinist. On the other, German Lutheran. They argued, although, as I see them … <\/p>\n