this thing doesn't care (from fb - 20200328)

(this is a post I originally made on facebook, copied here and backdated so I can look back on it later)

This thing doesn't care. It doesn't care if your area is red or blue, wealthy or poor. It doesn't care which candidate you support or which you despise. It doesn't care if a politician wants everything to go back to normal by Easter. It doesn't care if you think it's "just" a flu, it doesn't care that you take your vitamins, it doesn't care that you "never get sick". It doesn't care if you think you feel fine, it doesn't care if you think you are invulnerable.

It doesn't care if you are young, old, healthy, ill, strong, or weak. But it does hit the weakest, the oldest, the sickest, the most vulnerable the hardest, so your actions ripple out and have consequences even more than they normally do. Every single one of us is only a few degrees of separation at the most from being affected, with many of us already suffering.

Now is the time to trust doctors and health officials, to listen to the people who have spent their lives studying and working with situations like this. It's time to realize that this is bigger than you, bigger than your personal wants and needs, bigger than demographics and borders and biases and colors and creeds. Now is the time to remember that those lines on the charts and numbers in the reports are *people*, with lives and loves and hopes and dreams.

Now is the time to realize that in spite of the necessary physical isolation, we are not alone. We can get through this, and we will see the other side.

We can do this.