Worried For Wisconsin

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

My parents were originally from Wisconsin, and I have large numbers of extended family who live there. Yesterday the state held an election despite the pandemic. There’s been a lot of stuff said about that, which I won’t rehash here. I have family members of every political persuasion that vote. Some of them might have been forced to vote in dangerous conditions – or they might not have voted at all.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights make a left.

I’m more worried about my conservative family members.
From what information I’ve gleaned, I don’t think they’re taking the pandemic too seriously. My worry is that they went to the polls and didn’t take many precautions. Although poll workers in some places took precautions (links are in the article I linked above), I don’t know if they took precautions where my family members live.

If enough of them voted, or encountered someone who was sick, there’s a good chance the virus is going to spread among them. That terrifies me. Although I disagree with a bunch of stuff that they say and do, I don’t want to see people suffer. Nobody deserves to have bad things happen to them because they were told to choose between engaging with government or being infected with an illness.

Right now it’s easy to blame so many different people for their misplaced or wrongful efforts in addressing this public health crisis. Blaming people isn’t going to do any good, especially if it doesn’t prevent the same mistakes from happening over and over again. I have extended family who could be exposed to something dangerous, and there’s nothing I can do about the mistakes that led up to it.

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

Don’t make the same mistakes.
Wisconsin is a good example of how crazy things are right now. On a long enough timeline, this pandemic is going to make people question simple decisions. That’s bad enough without having to add difficult ones to the list.

Yeah, part of me is angry about all of these mistakes. After a while I realized that this anger isn’t healthy. Sadness isn’t healthy, either. Worrying about all this also isn’t helping. It’s hard for me to accept that people will do things to endanger themselves and others for no reason at all.

This was true regardless of the presence of a pandemic. If it wasn’t this, then it was going to be a different bad decision on a different day. I didn’t worry about any of that beforehand because the risk was out of mind. Now, with life being upended by one of the simplest life forms on this planet, I feel like I can only look at the risk.

All I can do is try to be aware of the mistakes that other people make, and take measures to not make them myself. Enough people will mourn after this is all said and done. I want to do my part to make that number as small as possible. Wisconsin might suffer for its decision. Or, it might get lucky. I can’t control what they do, but I can control how I respond to it.