By Lindsay Slogrove
Saffers, stop behaving like Americans. Please.
Millions in the You-Ess-Aye still refuse to wear masks or keep their social distance because of “muh freedom” or politics, and their surging Covid-19 numbers are ridiculous.
Now their hospital staff is running out, sometimes literally, dying, quitting or just not able to cope with the Covid cases, never mind critically ill people with other emergencies.
The stupidity and callousness of this murderous, prideful “individualism” are gobsmacking.
We’re going up again here, and we have to get over this “it can’t happen to me or my family” attitude.
We see this same belief on our roads every day, even if your driving time has been reduced because you’re working from home, or only going out when you must. There are always idiots of the asphalt who think their driving skills are way better than they really are, and believe nothing on their vehicles could break, sending them careening over the road and taking out their passengers or other people just going about their daily lives.
We’re heading into the holiday season with a double whammy looming: the annual bloodshed on our roads, a growing number of Covid-19 cases, and people wanting to shop up a storm, gather for parties, celebrations or worship en masse (pun intended).
We are all delighted at the prospect and promise of vaccines, but they will only work on people who aren’t already dead.
And they will not be here for a while. We have a duty to protect ourselves and each other.
With our privacy regulations, it’s hard for us to understand clearly who is dying and why. Unless someone chooses to share their experiences, we don’t hear about a person or family’s pain of losing someone, or the long-term effects many suffer months after surviving the virus.
There’s also the heart-wrenching situation of not being able to comfort the person who is in hospital or in isolation.
Having recently needed to be in a hospital, needing comfort and (not health) care, and being clothed in full PPE, it brought home how difficult our health workers’ lives are.
Not only is the strict adherence to donning and doffing hot, sweaty, cumbersome PPE several times a day a serious inconvenience, it was difficult trying to imagine their burden of dealing with more death than usual. Their pain, often unrecognised, of treating a patient and trying to save that life, and losing it.
Out of sight is out of mind, so unless you’ve experienced Covid-19, know someone who has been stricken, or lost someone to the disease, it seems people believe mitigating actions don’t apply to them.
We suffered the same deadly denialism with HIV.
Road deaths and Covid-19 (and HIV) casualties are preventable, if only we could get it through our skulls that it really is up to us as individuals.
We love hero stories of people who have risked their lives to save someone else’s. What we don’t seem to be able to do is understand that we can all be heroes, if we would just make a sacrifice on discomfort and be cautious.
It’s time to pull up our socks, Saffers. Or at least our masks.
PS Much gratitude to the readers who responded to last week’s column. Thank you.
The Independent on Saturday