A Shot In The Dark

 Well, okay then. So much for the "kids aren't affected by COVID-19." 

We could start with this simple concept: Everyone is someone else's kid. By this reckoning, all the victims of this virus have been children. Somebody's children.

But today I want to speak of one in particular: Nine year old Pierce O'Loughlin. Little Pierce did not die in an intensive care ward, surrounded by machines and doctors and nurses in masks. He was found dead in his home in San Francisco last Wednesday. His mother alerted authorities when it was reported that he did not attend school that day. When police responded, they found Pierce's body along with the body of his father, Stephen.

Stephen shot and killed his little boy, then turned the gun on himself.

And how is this a COVID-related death? Apparently the ugly ongoing custody battle between Pierce's mother and father centered on an angry disagreement about vaccination. Mom was for it. Dad was against it. Except, it would seem, in the case of lead pellets to relieve the pain of living. 

Once again, we are faced with what may be the most unforgivable crime: Murder-suicide. If you don't want to be vaccinated, and can't imagine living in a world that would do just that to your son, there's the door. Don't take your son with you. Unless you're not really making a statement about being an anti-vaxxer and you're doing the most despicable thing imaginable to punish your ex-wife. 

In which case, this isn't so much a COVID-related death as an excuse to be brutal. As if there wasn't enough death floating around, and suffering was in short supply. Did this clown really need a reason to inflict any more pain? 

Meanwhile, the debate over vaccination will rage, not unlike that about climate change, as our country continues to flirt with the nineteenth century. My parents had a very good friend who, in spite of growing up with polio, became a pediatrician and a professor at the UCLA school of Medicine. My guess is that if she heard of anyone turning down a vaccine for anything, she would have beat them severely with her cane. I wish Dr. Jo would have had a shot at Stephen O'Loughlin before he went. 

Literally and figuratively.