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Amidst the congratulations, hope and relief (and they are deserved) about the coming of a vaccine, this morning I note that worldwide more than one million, four hundred and twenty thousand souls have died from COVID 19.

1,420,000.

And that doesn’t count many more who have recovered, sort of, but will have to live with the long-term effects of this disease.

Just a number. But think about it.

Starting the first of January 2021, if one person died every minute of every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take us almost 3 years – until September, 2023 – before the virus ran its course.

That’s a father, mother, son, daughter, grandfather, grandmother, friend passing away, gasping for breath, each and every 60 seconds, year after year after year. Think about it. Think about it happening to the people next to you now. Think about the grief and sorrow, think about the loss.

And still we have people refusing to wear a mask to protect others in the midst of a raging pandemic. It beggars belief. And it saddens me that there are people amongst us who do not have the compassion or sense of civic responsibility to make such a small sacrifice.

They claim it’s an infringement on their ‘rights’ but they fasten their seatbelts without further thought and every day perform all kinds of acts that society has determined is for the greater good even though it constrains individual ‘freedoms’ . Yet these people do not see the paradox.

As I say, it beggars belief.

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