I'm 60+ years old, retired, spent almost 20 years working at the health department in IT, so I'm not a medical professional but had to attend all the first responder trainings after 9/11. Being an IT type I'm curious about a lot of things and paid attention to my training no matter what it was. In the 2000's we had a couple of true pandemics that no one gave a shit about. We didn't even wear masks at the health department at the HIV clinic, a human pox we didn't have a handle on yet.

Fast forward to today. My wife of almost 40 years, who (I think) has been voting conservative all this time, is shrieking (not exaggerating) at me for refusing to get the "vaccine". And every other conservative I know has gotten in line to get it. The stupid part is, if YOU have been vaccinated, and you believe it's effective, then why the hell should you care if I've had the shot or not? I can't make her understand this.

I didn't see this kind of hysteria with HIV, and we thought that might kill us all. Something has gone terribly askew on the treadle.