In the summer, the weird summer of 2003, it was hot. It was the year of the Valentine’s day blizzard, Hurricane Isabel and some deadly heat in between. We had just invaded Iraq, there was a huge eastern power outage and it just happened to be a freaky year.

One late afternoon at the end of the summer, I went outside to sit on the front porch with a glass of iced tea and a pack of cigarettes. It was warm but still pleasant.

As I sat there without anyone else to witness what happened next, a movement across the street caught my attention. I looked, and moving quickly from my right to my left, something–some…thing…ran upright, on two legs!

It was about ten to twelve inches tall, light gray or white, mammalian and impossible. Humans are the only species known to traverse that kind of distance, walking or running, with such speed, on two legs. A feeling of the uncanny ran through me from head to foot. I was frozen. Never had I seen the like; it was chilling, not awe-inducing.

It was wrong. I was seeing something that was not right.

It ran to a wooden utility pole with a streetlight. It climbed rapidly, using all four limbs. If it can do that, I wondered, why not run on all four limbs?

What happened next was even more freaky. At the top, difficult to see because the streetlight had come on, something big spread its wings and jumped off. It couldn’t fly, or didn’t want to; it just glided into the back yard of the house across the street, where it was dark because of trees, so I lost it.

I thought, after the shock wore off, that I had seen a cryptid (an undiscovered species), and this one a shape-shifter. I still can’t explain it.

I know what it’s like to see something you can’t understand, haven’t seen before, hope you never see again. I know what that’s like. It’s rather scary, but you can never forget it. The fear may go away, but the vision never does.

I wonder, then, given the perspective of such an experience, why people who know something dangerous is around insist on throwing caution to the wind. Maybe I never felt threatened by what I saw, but it still shook me up considerably.

This would be a different story if I had continued seeing it, but I didn’t. Something very large and unusual later flew close to me but it was too dark to see what it was. That doesn’t count.

But what if I had seen it? What if it had displayed dangerous behavior? Well first of all, I’d have avoided going outside at dusk.

With a known predator, things change. If wild cats like lynx or something larger stalked your area at night, you wouldn’t go out unarmed, and then only rarely, preferably with help.

In medieval England and Western Europe, there were rarely classic fireplaces in single family homes. Fires were centrally located and roofs had holes in the peak to vent smoke. No one was getting in that way. Further, windows were shuttered at night by heavy doors on the inside that were barred just as the heavy door was. After the ritual of locking up for the night was complete, a family could sleep, knowing brigands and animals were not a likely threat.

I wonder, then, why a stalker which kills so often is not similarly defended against. Long after the novel coronavirus appeared to strike so many down, we finally have a way to bar the door, yet not only are people not barring their doors, they’re flinging them open because they don’t believe that there’s any danger. Of course, danger does lurk, and it claims many victims.

Even after neighbors have been found ripped apart by predators, they continue to leave their doors open. When the local magistrate orders them to lock up, they refuse. They claim the right to leave their doors open.

Until one night when they hear their baby crying and realize some animal’s carrying it away to eat at its leisure away from the village.

They have learned a great lesson which never had to happen. Had they simply listened when the word spread that tigers had been spotted by the nightwatch, then acted accordingly, with some common sense, their baby would still be in its cradle, soundly sleeping.

It’s history. All along we have known that certain animals posed a threat. We learned how to defend ourselves and use caution. It was common sense, really; a barrier and weapons, usually ranged ones, were required for survival. Nobody wanted close contact or combat with large predators, so the barricades of walls, fences, fires and the fortified house were common.

***

Disease has come calling many times. It always took too many from us, leaving grief and a weakened population in its wake. The Plague of Justinian was to return many times, and was identified in modern times as Bubonic plague from an “extict” form of the bacterium Y. pestis.

Historians recorded the symptoms of Black Death and the toll. Today that toll of around 10 to 15,000 a day is questioned, but there’s little question that two forms of the plague were spreading. Descriptions of people dying the same day they showed symptoms point to septic plague, in which the same infection infiltrates, and remains in, the blood. Today it is treatable and can be survived if identified and treated quickly. But in the time of Justinian, it would have happened exactly as historical records indicate: wake up fine, dead by sunset. And we know that Justinian was a dick. He did nothing to understand or combat the affliction. He watched his people die and what do you think he did?

He raised taxes!

I’m sorry, but is this not the height of evil, of denial, and betrayal? Sure, sure, you can argue that there was little he could do. It is the first recorded spread of the plague on such a massive scale. But not being able to solve a problem and making the problem worse are the difference between good and evil. Justinian was a dick.

Plagues had been around before. I daresay many were so severe and occurred at such an early time that little to no record of them survive. Perhaps we will one day find an answer in a written language we haven’t learned to read yet. Or archaeological sites may yield written history. We haven’t found everything.

The Plague of Athens was noted during the Peloponnesian War, hitting the city hard in 430 BCE, less than a year after the onset of hostilities. That one was quite mysterious and remains so today. While no conclusive proof has been found, the University of Maryland found typhus the likely source, but others maintain that it could have been typhoid, bubonic plague (unlikely) or Ebola. Descriptions also lead others to believe hemorrhagic fever was present.

It’s doubtful that we will ever know. But in the face of this unknown killer, trouble in the populace and immigrants also presented.

This is the nature of any pandemic; it disrupts the lives of an infected or exposed population and all forms of trade. Soon bodies are everywhere. They stack up, posing a secondary health risk. In the ancient and medieval world, bodies were thrown on massive pyres or buried in mass graves. There was no time for burial rites, which were abandoned, usually by decree, as the risk of contagion was noted to be too high.

***

I’m reminded as I write this of refrigerated trailers dropped off at various places in 2020 to store dead victims of the novel coronavirus. I remember people being terrified. Health care workers being interviewed and saying they had to reuse masks, and, how many of them died.

I remember the lockdown and how I thought no one should be surprised by it considering the gravity of the situation. How quiet it got around here.

Then, knowing that the Delta variant was out there, the last of the mask and social distancing restrictions were lifted.

Sure enough, spikes on the line graphs, big spikes, are showing up. Worse, it’s particularly deadly to unvaccinated people who know everything they need to know in order to survive. Yet even vaccinated patients get the virus. They are all likely to survive with minimal symptoms, though. The vaccines are effective against it.

And now it comes time to ask the question, Why risk the end of your life and those of your family when it’s not necessary?

The reasons given are pathetic. “Documents” show that the government made it up. Or rushed the development of the vaccine. Or have microchips in the serum to track you. Or kill you. Or turn you into a Borg or a Manchurian candidate. Or tag you for abduction by martians.

The disinformation out there harkens back to the days of old, when no one knew what plagues were and attributed them to the unfair wrath of Zeus (which really did result in the refusal to make sacrifices and attend to the temples).

According to BBC News, “influencers”, YouTube personalities with lots of followers, have been approached by mysterious benefactors offering chicken scratch money to cite false claims about vaccines by brand name. The plot was exposed but questions remain about the perpetrators; it seems to go to the top of the corporation competing against the one being smeared. Big money is behind a lot of such bullshit and they’re trying to get people killed.

You think that, maybe, CEOs and board members are innocent because they never pull a trigger, but when their commands are carried out, their employees cause desolation and death. Sometimes it takes years for a scandal to be exposed, and defense attorneys insist that corporate leaders are always innocent. The truth is that by casting doubt on one vaccine, operatives know that all vaccines will be mistrusted. It doesn’t make sense, as a business tactic.

People die this way. And far from having plausible deniability, presidents and CEOs who approve of dirty tactics are responsible for people dying, just as the ones following orders are.

In such an environment and considering decades of anti-vaxxaer’s campaigns, it is little wonder that even people who lose loved ones will deny it was covid. It’s a government plot to thin population, it’s a plot to track you. Whatever.

It doesn’t occur to people that population thinning would be impossible to control, cannot be selective, and would result in the loss of educated and experienced workers, leading to disaster. Population control by pandemic is a stupid concept.

Not only that, but someone high up in the government would blow the whistle.

In the end, it is the individual who chooses not to be vaccinated. No reason they can give is good enough. They could die. Many already have. Way too many.

Depending on the country being discussed, vaccine supplies vary, as do percentages of population having been inoculated. But to have plenty, for free, it is suicide to refuse the needle. The Delta variant is more easily transmitted. It is deadlier. And maybe it is true that people are free to choose, but this choice is a no-brainer. Misinformation combined with preconceptions is lethal and in full play.

Meanwhile, terminal patients with cancer or anything you care to use as an example would give anything if a simple pair of shots could save them. It seems to me that anti vaxxers don’t want to die either; they simply choose the risk over something they have been taught to fear, or they still believe that covid is a hoax.

I’m sure that if I live to be a thousand, it will never make any fucking sense to me.