The Virus and the Unreal

No vaccines. No masks. No business closures or regulations. Nothing. Just let 'er rip because... it is not real. The acute pain, the gasping for air and dying alone in plastic tents, the weight of a grand piano on the chest in the testimony of hundreds of thousands, the other ER cases who cannot get a bed, the medical staff reduced psychologically to fumes and shards of burnout, the shattered families, the virus patients crawling back from death's door, the hundreds of thousands plundering through that door - their lungs topping out with fluid and drowning being their final experience on this mortal plain... none of it is real. Not real. Or unreal. Irreal. The only reality is what the believer asserts. Stand them in the ER of an Alabama hospital for the night shift today, August 18, 2021. Let them witness the chaos, the despair, the bewilderment, the howling pain of patients battling a hungry virus -- children, teenagers, college kids, butchers, bakers and businesswomen crushed by the thing from a bat or a lab. Let them watch the nurses and doctors and paramedics try to hold it together as they relive the exact hell they lived one year ago, almost to the day. Let the ideologue watch all of it and still they will say: IT IS NOT REAL.