The author, Connie Schultz, is an American journalist that has won a Pulitzer Prize for her journalistic commentary.
Below is a post she added to her public Facebook group page on September 22, 2022.
I had arrived at the pharmacy for two scheduled vaccinations – flu and the new COVID booster – and until a woman sitting next to me knew that, we got along great. A troubling discussion ensued, but what has stayed with me five days later is the response of another customer who was eavesdropping on our conversation. When I said three of my friends had died of COVID, she scoffed.
No, they didn’t,” she said. “The hospital is paid $3,000 a patient to tell you they died of COVID. Never happened.” The woman sitting next to me nodded. “Exactly.”
But five days later, I’m still rattled by that woman’s response. On the drive home, my husband called. After describing the encounter, I said, “Why am I so shaken by this?”
You’ve never had this happen in person,” he said. “It can be shocking to see this level of denial.”
Certainly, we’ve read about people who are anti-vax, and we’ve seen videos of extremists coughing on strangers in stores. I regularly visit the online Johns Hopkins COVID resource center to track the number of cases and vaccination rates across the country. But all of this has been from a distance. I’ve never come face-to-face with someone who,
initially friendly and engaging, became hostile simply because I was getting a COVID vaccine.
But that’s not why I keep coming back to that exchange. It was the other angry woman, the one who wanted me to believe I had been duped about how my friends had died.
I cannot imagine a scenario in which a person told me about losing a loved one and my response would be to deny how they died.
No matter how bizarre the purported circumstances, my first words – my only appropriate response – is to say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry you lost your mother, your brother, your father, your friend. This is what most of us would do. Expressing sympathy is an act of basic decency.
I’m not about to argue that this pandemic has robbed us of our civility, but I am increasingly concerned about what it has done to our collective sense of compassion. I count myself as part of the problem.
Connie Schultz, Facebook post dated September 22, 2022.
Leave a Reply