COVID Has Become a Blood Sport

Currently, Biden is deploying military medical teams to hospitals in six states as omicron disrupts essential services. My sister is a registered nurse in Maine. She told me this morning that her neighbor is in the hospital with COVID. It doesn’t look good for him.

According to her, there’s a continuous stream of ambulances, helicopters and even military personnel in the area.

For the life of me, I do not know why there are so many people that still believe that this world pandemic is a kind of hoax or an over-exaggerated political ploy by one party to defeat the other party.

Clearly, we still think that America is the center of the universe.

So what could possibly be behind our rampant denial? Because my sister is not in cahoots with the government. And, surely every hospital across the world hasn’t entered into a sinister pact to lie to us about the shortages of hospital beds, staffing issues, and high numbers of unvaccinated patients filling up their ICUs whenever they experience a surge.

So, why do I see laughing emoji faces as a response to tragic articles? Why do conspiracies abound? Why are we so angry at each other? Who and what are we becoming? Or have we always been like this?

Maybe we no longer care whether we fix problems.

Instead, we’ve become involved in a form of Hunger Games where the winner takes all. We stand helplessly on the sidelines cheering for our teams. It’s all about winning. Even though most Americans would be hard pressed to explain exactly what they think they’re winning or losing, it’s still all about winning. It’s a blood sport where we cheer when the opposition loses a head, an eye, a hand, or even their lives in this brutal social sport. That’s the whole point. Another head, another eye, another win for the team. There doesn’t have to be any other end result. It’s emotionally satisfying to see someone bleed. The more blood the higher we soar. We become addicted to the bloody business of the big win.

Except there are no winners in this game. That’s an illusion. We’re all big fat losers instead.

Why? Because we can’t cooperate to save our own lives. I’ve never been so disgusted with the United States as I am now. And, I’ve had some pretty low moments when it comes to my own country. After all, it was my generation that died for a worthless cause called the Vietnam War.

But this, this is different.

Covid has shed a light on our deeply flawed natures and are highly toxic way of complaining about everything while unable to fix anything. I used to think we simply refused to fix things, but now I’m pretty sure that we can’t fix things. We’re too paranoid, mean, selfish, compassionless, and self involved. We’d rather post on social media about our 100th boyfriend, flaunting that we’ve finally found the one, than spend ten minutes worrying about this pandemic, climate change, refugees, etc. etc. etc.

That’s no fun!

This wasn’t supposed to happen to us. It makes us mad. What?!?! Someone else behind the scenes can’t effortlessly fix our problems for us so that we can continue living the same shallow day over and over again. Eating, sleeping, drinking, watching TV, messing with our toys, making and breaking up, and being mean whenever we want.

This is so inconvenient.

We like to drink at the bar and eat at a restaurant. We don’t have any desire whatsoever to devote our time to fixing complex problems. That’s someone else’s job. We’re just consumers. We buy everything we need even solutions to big problems. Isn’t it enough that we pay taxes? Now, we’re being asked to make personal sacrifices as well? How dare they!

That’s the ignorant America that I’ve come to know.

When confronted with world problems, we’re too spoiled and lazy to pull together, make sacrifces for the good of society, and support those who are carrying this heavy load for us. Our scientists working to get on top of this insidious virus, our teachers, nurses and doctors, those who keep our daily lives from crashing around our ears in our heavily dependent consumer world, we hate them all.

Instead we actually bash, attack, even threaten those who are trying to help us, making it impossible to help anyone.

But, but, but, Teresa, this is the greatest country in the world. If you don’t like it — leave.

Riiiiight. Like that’s the answer. Whenever someone goes all patriotic on me, I have to laugh out loud. Listen, Jethro, the lottery of birth put me in this country. I didn’t get to choose. Nor did you. We have almost no control but what little we do have is right here in the country that we were gifted when we left wherever we were before we were born and entered our assigned wombs.

I’m a voting citizen in THIS country. Nowhere else. I raised a family in THIS country. My granddaughter will grow up in THIS country.

This isn’t a competition about who inherited the better country. All countries have their problems. This is a battle about the soul of humanity, the species with the big brain that to this day resorts to violence as their number one problem solving skills.

Furthermore, this is about more than COVID or a world pandemic.

It’s about all the challenges we face that threaten our existence. It’s about our struggles to survive in an unfriendly environment even though cooperation has been proven over and over again to be the key to survival.

Not competition, my poorly informed fellow American.

Cooperation is the key. Unless you own an island or are planning to move to another planet as soon as our billionaires start selling time shares, then this planet is all you’ve got.

Yes, our technological advancement is exponentially faster than any time in human history, but look around you.

We’re socially stunted. The gap between our social and technological advancements is widening by the day, the hour, the minute. We still solve problems the same way our primordial ancestors did — through violence. The selfish gene is still clouding our judgement. Emotions rule not logic. We’re as tribal as ever. Superstition is prevalent. We lie to ourselves and everyone else because the truth hurts. There’s little to no trust left between us. We struggle to hang on to a functioning social contract.

Sooooooo….

It appears that as I pounded out this article on my keyboard that I’ve made a feeble attempt to identify a possible explanation for what’s going on all around me every hour of every day since this world pandemic took over. Maybe it’s just a piece of the problem. After all, nothing is simple, least of all human beings.

Feel free to add to the list of things that deterr us from finding solutions to problems.

Because we’ll never lack for problems. They will continue to abound. Once one is solved a half dozen new ones will emerge. Some are sent by Mother Nature herself in the form of a virus and others we bring upon ourselves. If we EVER truly want to fix ANYTHING in this old world that we inherited through the sheer lottery of birth, we’re going to have to learn to cooperate with one another. That’s the secret to a functioning family, neighborhood, community, country and world.

It’s that simple and that hard.

Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.