The spread of disease caused by people’s irrational and baseless skepticism over vaccination.

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I wrote and published this word years ago. At the time it was a response to a generation of gauzy, wealthy, suburban moms refusing to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases, because of their belief in the widely-disproven link between vaccines and autism. At the time, it was a pet peeve… a baffled lamentation that privileged people with no critical thinking skills would imperil their neighbors because of some idiot information on the internet.

My god. I had no idea what was coming.

Today things are terrifyingly different… and infuriatingly the same. We’re two years into a pandemic that’s killed over 5.5 million people around the world. Vaccination, like everything in this star spangled toilet, has become politicized. Figures on the right have cynically stood against vaccination to appease their paranoid, imbecilic base. And figures on the left (myself included) have become haughtily embittered toward them all.

I just read a news update that Glenn Beck – remember that toad? – has reacquired Covid. It’s in his lungs now. He’s been a steadfast anti-vaxxer. And I now must waste the brainspace on the moral calculus over whether or not I should feel sorry for him. I feel like I should. I think it’s right for me to feel sorry for him. But the truth is: I don’t. I don’t care about him or his life. I think he’s a cynical monster whose hubris and nihilism got other people killed. It’s only fair it kill him too.

Being alive is fucking exhausting.