Before the pandemic, I thought I lived in a society like other people did. We were a community, we followed rules, we took care of each other – my freedom ends where your freedom begins, etc.
Things had obviously become alarming before 2020. Things that you thought were unspoken and widely accepted just weren’t anymore. I had been under the impression that a large majority of us knew that the Nazis were bad and that we were moving to a more accepting, healthier, more progressive world. There were pockets of people who held on to a faulty study about vaccines – and also somehow how decided that getting polio was better than being autistic.
(I watched a show once, Pregnant in Hells, which was disconcerting for a lot of reasons, but what I remember most was the mother who didn’t want to vaccinate because ‘who even gets polio anymore.’ Dramatic irony).
In March 2020, it felt like we were all together. People were locked down, masking, and we all seemed to accept that this was the thing to do. And then things started to change and it became clear that some people were, in fact, only thinking about themselves and their wants.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving towards the highway on ramp and the SUV that was in front of me decided that he desperately needed to pass the truck that was in front of him. So he did. Never mind the two oncoming cars he forced off the road.
There have been increased head-on collisions around here, but this was the first time I had seen anything like that myself. Forced two cars off the road, risked multiple lives and carried on on his merry way, glad to get wherever he was going two minutes earlier.
This is an extension of the refusal to vaccinate and the measles outbreak happening across North America.
I’m not sure where we go if people refuse to give a shit about other people. Or where to go now that my overarching belief that people do give a shit about other people, generally, is in tatters.