The Problem with Going by the Science

Finishing my garden projects without aggravating my pinched nerve has been impossible. Weeding overgrown areas, pulling up the weed barrier under the weeds, hand-tilling the soil, grading it, then planting was about the most I could do without hurting myself--but then the lawn had to be mowed. Putting off mowing it just makes it harder later. The weather going from chilly to hot within two weeks offered a very short window to get everything done, but almost all of the nearly two hundred seedlings I started are in the ground. 

The worst part about my pinched nerve is that I don't sleep well. It makes my left side buzz and keeps me awake. At that point, doing yoga just makes it worse--all that helps is aspirin. 

So after weeding, tilling, grading and seeding a spot by the driveway this morning, I stopped for the day spent a pleasant hour enjoying some coffee and reading what the Indiana legislature was up to. They've set up a process to create urban agriculture zones, prioritized protection of monuments, made female genital mutilation a felony, required civics education of middle-schoolers, forbade microchipping of employees (that's a thing?) enacted police reforms, established religious services as essential, and empowered the legislature to call themselves into an emergency session during a state of emergency declared by the governor--and put a stop to a never-ending declared emergency. The governor vetoed it. The House overrode the governor's veto, the Senate overrode the governor's veto, and then the attorney general refused the represent the governor in his lawsuit over the bill. Maybe the governor needs to take that middle-school civics class and review separation of powers. Maybe someone needs to remind him that authoritarian governors keep losing in court (see Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, and New York). Maybe he just needs to stop and realize that Hoosiers have spoken: we don't want a handful of people putting us through an endless state of emergency. 

Oddly, people's caution seems to be in inverse proportion to their likelihood of getting a bad case of COVID. A neighbor in delicate health hasn't been vaccinated. People I know who work entirely at home, and don't care to hit the bars at quitting time, have gotten the shot.  Some universities in Indiana and elsewhere are requiring students and faculty to be vaccinated. Some higher-risk people never stopped coming to the office; a lot of lower-risk people are now maskless (which is allowed if you're fully vaccinated). Indianapolis is the only place left in Indiana with a mask mandate, even though the county's advisory level is 1 out of a possible 3--around the middle of the pack for the state. Even through March Madness, deaths were around 1 or 2 per day, where they've stayed ever since.

This is the problem with "going by THE SCIENCE." Even if the science is clear (and it isn't for efficacy of masks or long-term side effects of vaccines), people react differently to that information. People who don't want to be cooped up or live with a long list of rules--like people in the Dakotas--well, they don't want to be cooped up or follow a long list of rules. If you're living cheek by jowl with people, you need to accommodate each other more. So yes, having a patchwork of laws makes sense for a patchwork of people, even if some of the individual laws don't. 

As for me, I don't get pills, shots or procedures I don't need, period. I'm at a low risk for COVID. If I were to get it and give it to someone else, it would very likely be to someone who also decided not to get the shot and decided not to stay home. If they have risk factors of overweight, vitamin D deficiency or diabetes, those risk factors are largely optional and anybody "going by the science" would do the best they could to mitigate those factors instead of putting on weight. So no, I don't feel bad about not getting a shot. The only thing that feels bad is my pinched nerve. And I'm not getting a shot for it!