Ever since I was a little girl, my mother, Ruth, told me stories about going to the cemetery to visit her dead mother on Memorial Day Weekend. They normally did this every Sunday. But Memorial Day was special. Perhaps it was a social event with others attending their own deceased family members. Sometimes they brought a picnic. Her father would tend to the gravesite. He would put fresh flowers there and trim the flowering shrubbery. He pulled the weeds that grew near the headstone. While he took care of the gravesite, Ruthie ran among the stone memorials and admired the carving on certain headstones or Mausoleums. She did not especially like going to the cemetery. She had no memory of her mother, and she loved her Gramma who lived with them and acted as a Mother to her. But she loved her father very much and she understood that it was important to him to spend this time in the cemetery with his wife who was taken too soon.

Helen Dow Hale was only 24 years old when she died on October 16, 1918, of the Spanish Flu. Her baby girl was only 8 months old when she lost her mother. That baby was also briefly ill with the flu, but she survived and lived to be 101 years old. That baby girl was my mother.
Because of my family’s focus on that flu epidemic, it was natural for me to show interest in Covid-19. To me it has always been the “China flu” but somehow that became a political statement. It did originate in China, however. So why not call it what it is? It interested me from the beginning.

I started paying attention to the “count” every day. There was an easy-to-use site that listed the number of sick and the death rate by country and within the USA by state. Of course, the numbers changed every day. It appeared that the virus was spreading continuously but not alarmingly fast. My curiosity led me to wonder if the numbers were normal or if we were really losing people in the way that they did in 1918.

I googled to see how many people die (of all causes) every day in the USA. It was a number that shocked me. Nearly 8000 die daily of all causes. From old age to suicide, cancer, and infant death, the total for each day is in the high 7 thousands. And so that means that in 10 days nearly 80,000 people die. And in a month, approximately 240,000 people die. Every month almost a quarter of a million die, which means ‘times 12′ for the year and that number is 2,880,000 per year. That is approaching 3 million people. Somehow that puts our stated number of deaths reportedly over 500,000 for the year into perspective. Maybe it is not as horrific as it seems. When you first state the number of the dead it sounds like a lot. Each death is important. For each one, many lives are changed, saddened, and never the same again. But the fact is that we all will die eventually. Life is the beginning and death the end of our human existence.

When I began to focus on the new deaths early on during this current bout of Covid. I realized we were not in the sort of Pandemic that people experienced in 1918. It was nowhere near as serious. Later I discovered that the CDC itself said that of the more than 500,000 who died, only 6% were actually solely from the virus. The other 94% died due to something else. Somehow they were counted as COVID deaths. Why is that? Who benefits from puffing up the numbers?
Often I feel as if I am living in an alternate universe. The sweep of propaganda has been so effective. People tell me about relatives who died of Covid. They are convinced they died of it. And yet when I am able to check, it turns out that many of these had pre-existing conditions. Some were already in Hospice care. Hospice won’t take you unless you are near death, normally within 6 months. The mass hysteria and the brainwashing that has gone on baffles me. How did this happen? What caused people to buy into the fear with such conviction? And why won’t they let it go in the face of so much proof that the virus is treatable and probably not all that contagious? It seems as if there are a few “super-spreader” events where multiple people became ill, but for the most part, it did not appear to spread from person to person in the frightening way it was portrayed.

Now we are faced with a decision to take an experimental shot to lessen the effects of the virus if you catch it. This “vaccine” which is really NOT a vaccine, has not been developed long enough to know what the downside may be. Are unknown flaws and fatal side effects yet to be discovered? It looks that way. Be careful.
I have heard people say they would rather take their chances with a vaccine rather than “die of Covid”. But that is absurd. There is no reason to die of the virus any longer. Now, we know of several different treatments that are cheap, easily available, and very effective. Just be sure NOT to wait. Get treatment immediately if you are exposed or especially if you test positive. You might want to step up your intake of Vitamin D and zinc. Go out in the sunshine, eat fresh food, enjoy farmers’ markets and restaurants. Entertain your friends and revel in camaraderie and friendship. It is summer. Time to enjoy your life and be grateful.

Copyright©. 2021 Bonnie B. Matheson