The Illusion of Control

So, I know it has been 2 months since I posted anything, but man, what a crazy two months it has been.  The beginning of the year looked so positive and promising, and here we are, dare I say, all of us asking where the reset button is from 2020.  It is a like a video game that went sideways early on and instead of trying to slog through the rest of the game, it is just easier to start over.

That is the thing, though, time does not stop, and flux capacitors haven’t been invented yet, but I still want a DeLorean.  We pretend that we have control over our lives, and to some extent we do, but when it comes to the time, we leave this world, we have almost none.  You can get your annual check-ups, you can watch your diet, and exercise, but that isn’t going to save you from the idiot driver who isn’t paying attention.  Shoot, you can live a healthy lifestyle and still have a heart attack, like one of the trainers from the Biggest Looser. 

My dad was probably one of the healthiest people in my family, did everything he was supposed to do, and one morning he had a heart attack, and we lost him that day.  With everything going on this year, my grandmother could not attend his funeral so she could say goodbye to her son.  And while this virus is bad, we were told early on that it wasn’t worse than the flu, then we shut everything down.  Now, as we get more data, we find out it is a little worse than the flu but not that much worse.  The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%, but studies done in New York show it may actually be closer to 0.5%.

For context we currently have number of deaths attributed to covid-19 of about 63,000 per the CDC at the time of me writing this.  We have been dealing with this virus since early February at the earliest, since the cases before that were brought over and quarantined from out of the country.  The flu in 2017-2018 killed 79,400 according to the CDC, and in 2018-2019 it killed 34,200 according to the CDC.  The number in the 2017-2018 season are worse than the latest models for covid-19 that predict about 74000 deaths according to the University of Washington models.  But we have a vaccine for the flu, and we have nothing for covid-19, and the vaccine in 17-18 was 40% effective.  That is not great but it is better than nothing.  Could you imagine if the vaccine didn’t exist what that flu would have been like?

Even with those rates, people still don’t want to get the shot.  I use public restrooms and wash my hands like I am going into surgery.  I even use a towel to grab the door handle when I leave, because I see a bunch of people who take a shit and just leave.  I watched an episode of Mythbusters where they proved that there was almost nothing you could do to keep poop off of your toothbrush.  Now I soak my brush with Listerine before I use it.

The only difference I see now, is that it is on the news all of the time.  It is like school massacres, you would think they were just a phenomenon that started in the 90s.  But just do a google search and you will find they have been going on since the 1840s, and the worst one being in 20s, and I mean the 1920s.  We don’t remember them, because they were local events and not all over the national news.  These are terrifying things, and I am not advocating for people to not be aware or precautious.  But life is dangerous, we can all build bunkers that are hurricane and tornado proof, with disinfecting showers when you enter and hermetically seal behind you.

At the end of the day we are all still going to die, we can choose enjoy the life we have and accept the risks and possibly die young.  Or we can be miserable, eat only healthy foods, exercise frequently, never really have human contact for fear of disease, and still die young, because of all of the stress we had worrying about being healthy.  No matter how anyone may feel, there are just things that are beyond our control, and no amount of worry or stress will change that. 

But please, wash your fucking hands in the bathroom, if you really don’t think you need to, stop using toilet paper, then maybe there would be some in the stores.