200 Times Worse than 9/11

I’ve lived exactly one third of my life post 9/11. Before that date bad things that happened in our country were just bad, but we got over them. I grew up watching the TV news in the era of Vietnam. Every night Walter Cronkite would open the news with the number of dead Americans in Vietnam that day. To my small person’s perspective I thought the news was the report of everybody that died in all of America, but the number was small, a dozen or so.

We had the assignation of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy’s. Then their was the Challenger explosion. I felt like those were the worst tragedies I would ever see. 9/11 changed all of that. We came together as a country in our collective grief and we supported each other, because we had a common enemy.

Covid has been a tragedy of more than 200 times the magnitude in the sense of deaths, but somehow Covid has divided this county unlike any terrorist. I wish that people would learn to come together like we did after 9/11.

The idea of getting a vaccine and wearing a mask to protect your neighbor would have been a no brainer right after 9/11 if that would protect the county. Where is that American spirit today?

After 9/11 I thought that would be the biggest national tragedy I would witness is my life, but Covid has overtaken that spot. We didn’t know 9/11 was going to happen, but we did work to ensure that terrorists could not use planes as bombs again. We can slow Covid and give our health care workers a break if we all take the scientifically proven measures of vaccines and mask wearing . It is patriotic to do what is right for the collective good of America. Children under 12 can’t be vaccinated yet. When in modern American history have we not tried to protect children? Not getting a vaccine and wearing a mask puts children at risk. I know no one thinks of themselves as child killers.

Let’s feel that good feeling of coming together for each other. Let’s do what Dolly Parton wants us to do. Get the vaccine and wear a mask. There is nothing more American than that. I don’t want Covid to be 400 times worse than 9/11.