And Now.......a moment to spill some SCALDING tea for people taking for granted that they see their families over the holidays as COVID numbers are back on the rise. [Or just an overall rant from having to sit in an apartment with the company of my cat for 9+ months while my immediate family lives in the same state as me less than a 4 hour drive away and getting constant news of friends losing family members to COVID or watching friends who had COVID so severe that they're being medically retired from the military that because their health will never be the same again.]
There are only 2 ways a lot of military members get to see their families right now if they do not live with them:
1) If they are transferring
2) Someone in their family dies.
And even then, they are forced into 2 week isolation/Restriction to Quarters and getting COVID tested more than once before checking into their new command or going back to work.
This is also not even factoring in if they are already under travel restrictions/bubbling between work, home and essential-only shopping.
Not everyone transferring actual gets to transfer. Based on the member's job/qualifications, they could be operationally held at their current command due to being mission essential. This hold can and has lasted anywhere from a few weeks up to the 9+ months that COVID has been a huge problem in the states.
A lot of branches have had members sign paperwork stating that they will be punished (Loss of rank, loss of money and liberty restrictions being the bare minimum potential punishments) for violating the isolation/bubbling instructions set by their Commanding Officer or big controlling factors of their respective branches. [This charge would be a violation of Article 92 in the UCMJ: Violation of a Lawful Order]
The mental health services that were already stretched thin? They are damn near non-existent leading to an already insanely high suicide rate to explode. No numbers have been released but it's coming.
But no one wants to have this conversation.
Convenience is more important than taking care of our Community/Public Health to a lot of these people who tout that they "Support the Troops" and "Support Essential Employees".
A lot of these people are the same ones who applauded Healthcare workers, First Responders and the Retail/Grocery employees when the shutdowns were in play but now are spitting in their faces, cursing them out and refusing to wear a mask for the 5 minutes of being inside a building when services reopened.
While the armed forces are a volunteer force, so are the people who run the Emergency Rooms, Fire Departments and your Police Stations.
With how our society runs, that Retail/Grocery/Sanitation/Utilities/Restaurant worker has to make the hard decision to risk not paying the bills, putting food on the table or infecting their family to go to a job that tries their best to protect them but the consumer won't.
Yet these workers they will wear masks for 8+ hours a day, washing and sanitizing their hands until there is just raw skin from over-use of sanitizing products to protect not just themselves and their families but also these same consumers who tout that it's 'no worse than the flu'. [Mild to WILD is how I call the potential effects of COVID]
That 'flu' is claiming lives young and old. Wiping out the older generation who have stories that have been censored from history books or have only been passed down orally from generation to generation. Wiping out the young who haven't even experienced a lot that life can offer.
I do not live in fear. I genuinely give a damn about my community.
I would like to one day see my grandparents who are cancer survivors without worrying that one my coworkers goes to a wedding, gets asymptomatically infected with COVID and spreads it in one of our work centers. [This actually happened and the workcenter fallout was HUGE]
