Stay home for the holidays

Yet again, here we are. We shouldn’t need to do this, but people are quick to kill off grandpa and a whole lot of other people in the process, so once again we need to use uncommon sense. Stay home. Seriously, don’t visit family, there are plenty of other holidays post pandemic to celebrate, for now just keep you, your family, and all the families your family comes in contact with safe. Stay the fuck home.

Normally around this time of the year people are looking for excuses to not visit family and have to listen to your slightly racist mother-in-law scream about how interracial marriage is ruining the racist fabric of America. Websites all over the internet come out with ways to avoid horrid conversations or other tips and tricks to get out of situations you don’t even want to be in to begin with.

This year however, people have a genuine reason to stay home. The whole flatten the curve thing that people pretend doesn’t exist to help keep a virus from spreading that kills ~1000 people a day that people seem to think isn’t deadly enough. ‘Merica land of the uncaring. It’s amazing how many “patriots” are fighting for the right to infect as many people as possible. The ol’ get put on a ventilator to own the libs trick.

Okay America, I know we suck at math, but let me do this very slowly. Say you have a gathering of 20 people and one of them has COVID, even if only 5 of those other 19 people get infected that’s a whole lot of others infected down the line. See because those 20 people likely don’t give a shit, they probably aren’t wearing masks, don’t bother social distancing, and don’t give a shit about being around people.

Say those 5 people only infect 3 others, well that’s an extra 15 people infected and we’re barely getting started. Say those 15 infect another 3 people each, that’s 45 people. Then those 45 people infect 3 people each, now we’re at 135 people infected. This is exponential growth, it’s tiny until it isn’t watch, we’re only 3 links into the chain, what happens if we keep going? Well 135 becomes 405, 1,215, 3,645, 10,935, 32,805, 98,415, 295,245.

Ten, ten links in that chain and we’re already at ~300,000 people infected. Again, exponential growth, it’s tiny until it isn’t. Let’s do another fun example, say you were to pay me a five cents a day and each day you doubled what you would pay me, on day thirty you would owe me 5,368,709,120 cents. Just a measly $53,687,091.20 dollars! Seriously, do the math yourself. So in short, stay the fuck home.

This is the perfect excuse to avoid family gatherings and let’s face it most of us want that! This isn’t a time to be anti-science. Let me be perfectly blunt, if you died because of your own stupidity that’s fine. The fact that you’re going to be the reason a few thousand others get sick and possibly die are a whole other problem. That’s because most of those other people need to work for a living because the government doesn’t give a shit about them. These are the people working at the grocery store, delivery workers, people who can’t afford to stay the fuck home and social distance because the system is crap.

These are people who can’t afford to NOT work. They are the same people who can’t afford insurance so they can’t even afford to go to the hospital if they get sick. Which brings me to the other group of people your idiocy is affecting, that’s healthcare workers. They can’t stay home either because you have a cousin who needs a heart transplant, or a sister who’s on dialysis. They go to work because it’s not just there job, if they don’t people would die. Which is why it’s your duty to stay the fuck home.

I don’t even know what conspiracy is floating around making people think that they NEED to be together for the holidays, but you most certainly do not! Look, I would beg if I thought that would work. I am a researcher in a hospital, and we’re full. In the normal pre-pandemic a hospital can run as hit capacity just because of the fluctuations of people getting hurt and sick.

The holidays are the worst because people deep fry a frozen turkey and drunk uncle bill now has third degree burns on 90% of his body. Or some poor kid with cancer gets the flu on top of having cancer and now is in the ER fighting for his life because his immune system is crap.

I hate to emphasize this, but I don’t give a crap about you as a person (okay, some of you I do, but the bulk of you I don’t even know). I care about the exponential effect your actions will have on our system. On the people who through no fault of their own need healthcare. People who cannot stay home because they wouldn’t have a home to go to if it weren’t for the minimum wage they make. The healthcare workers who are going to be exposed to your dumbass because you decided thanksgiving or any of the other fucking holidays is more important than the people around you.

You want to be a real “patriot,” then do your damn duty to keep this virus under control and stay the fuck home. You have a larger responsibility than just to yourself or to your family. That’s what being a”patriot” is all about, putting the country before your own stupid needs. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” right my hardcore “patriots,” or was that just a suggestion?