The voice on the other side of the phone asks me to tell them about my vacation and without hesitation I say “it is over.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good vacation or did I misunderstand your intent?”
“It was ok, but it wasn’t as relaxing as I would have liked. Too much together time throughout the year and now, work challenges that make me feel like the guy on the Titanic who spotted the iceberg and the dope in the WH irked me.”
We spend a few more minutes talking and I clarify that overall things are ok but I am worn out from the 983,833 day long time we call 2020.
“You know how I know I am tired? I haven’t taken care of a few things that are simple and I haven’t had the energy to take on a few other projects. If I had been smarter I wouldn’t have worked at all during my vacation. I still have 187 emails and a half dozen fires to work on.”
He laughs, tells me he understands and says to be kind to myself.
“You’ll manage this. You know how to move mountains.”
A cousin posted something about Covid19 on her FB page and one of her friends pushed out some conspiracy theory garbage.
I posted a remark about how some people think YouTube videos make them an expert but intentionally didn’t tag the person.
They responded and made a point to tag me. You can debate whether I encouraged them to respond by posting a comment but I won’t engage with you.
Instead I’ll tell you I provided a sharp response in which I told the person I think they are unhinged and or stupid. I wasn’t going to, but the dope caught me feeling a certain kind of irritation about the end of my break.
So I laid into him with a 90 second response that is highly unlikely to change their opinion but given the conspiracy theory crap I saw on their Facebook page I don’t think they’re interested in reality.
Easier for them to call me a sheep and say they pulled their research from the National Institute of Health.
Had I believed they had substance and the ability to engage in a dialogue I might have given them a more thoughtful reply but I don’t and I didn’t.
I am well read, highly educated and informed on a wide variety of topics.
I am very good at absorbing large amounts of complex information and spitting it back out in a way that makes sense to lay people but none of that provides me with real expertise in specific fields.
It doesn’t enable me to say I have training and practical experience that allows me to analyze the data at an expert level and that is ok.
It is why I go to doctors and don’t diagnose myself. It is why I hire contractors and mechanics to take on certain jobs.
I want expertise and knowledge and you can’t get that from watching YouTube videos and reading some medical journals for 9 months.
There is nothing wrong with people acknowledging they don’t have depth of knowledge. There is nothing wrong with getting educated so that you can become one of those people but these things don’t happen overnight.
Going back to this particular Yahoo, when I saw the links to quacks and whackadoodles who say Covid19 is like the flu and that the election was stolen I know I am not dealing with someone who wants to deal with reality.
And it is probably fair to say that in addition to being irked about vacation ending I am irked by those who support a man pushing sedition and those who act in ways that don’t lead to a faster and smarter end to the pandemic.
****
Heard a story today about some pharmacies that reached out to people about getting vaccinated early.
Apparently they had extra units and because the doses have an expiration date they had to find people to take them so that they wouldn’t be wasted.
I’d like to say I didn’t believe it because it sounds like a fantasy for some but I am certain it happened. Certain because the distribution of the vaccine has been disastrous as has the overall handing of the pandemic.
So I am going to try to find out if I can put my name on a list somewhere so that if some pharmacy ends up with extra I can volunteer to take it.
To be clear, I want first responders and those who work in positions where they are out with the public to get the vaccine first. They ought to have it before me.
But if there is a situation where there is extra and doses will go to waste than I will gladly do my best to get it.
It is ridiculous to be talking this way, but everything about this is ridiculous and, well here we are.
