Rant #2,709: Another Day

Like the old song says, it’s just another day.
 
It’s raining again outside—it did that all day yesterday—and I am inside, with no place to go.
 
And the New York Yankees have another COVOD-19 case, so what else is new?
 
This is the 10th such case that they have had since the All-Star break of about a month ago, and happily, all of the players effected have had mild cases—or at least we are being told that—and don’t really have to worry about any life-and-death situations.
 
The latest one is from one of their newest and most important players, Anthony Rizzo, and his case is different from the others.
 
Rizzo announced several weeks ago that he would not be getting the shot, because he still doubted the efficacy of what would have been shot into his veins.
 
Like millions of other Americans, he did not trust it, did not trust what he was being told by supposed experts, and was staying away from getting inoculated until he was assured, in his own mind, that what he was getting was what it was advertised as.
 
The interesting thing is that Rizzo perhaps knows better what a ‘life-and-death” situation really is, certainly more than most of us do.
 
He was diagnosed with limited state classical Hodgkin lymphoma in April 2008, when he was still a teenager.
 
He went through chemotherapy for six months, and then went into remission, so he has pretty much been to the mountain, and came back down alive.
 
Cancer runs in his family—his grandmother was reportedly going through breast cancer at the same time as he was going through his cancer treatment—so you know that Rizzo is extra careful with his body and knows its limitations.
 
As a former cancer patient, he simply did not feel comfortable with the virus injection, but he was coming to a team that met the 85 percent threshold for the shots as requested by Major League Baseball, and I am sure both he and the Yankees knew that when he was acquired.
 
The team blames the recent rash of outbreaks on their trip to Florida, where they played both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Miami Marlins over a several-day stretch.
 
With the variant coming to our shores, Florida has become a hot spot for the virus, with some of the most relaxed rules in the nation.
 
The Yankees feel that they picked it up there, even though most of the players who contacted the virus were inoculated, with only one getting the two-shot dose and only at least one, besides Rizzo, not getting inoculated at all.
 
So seven players got the virus after they thought they were protected with the Johnson & Johnson one-shot dose, one received a two-shot dose and thought he was protected, and two players did not get the shot at all.
 
In my mind, you can’t blame anyone here, although you have to question why the players who got the one-shot dose thought they were being protected from this thing, and especially from the variant.
 
And you have to wonder whether the team’s 85 percent inoculation rate is even valid, if, in fact, so many players opted for the one-dose shot, and others did not get any shot at all.
 
But again, there is no blame to go around, because one thing that we have learned is that this virus—and this variant—is as quirky as can be, and you are seemingly open to it whether you got the shot—any shot—or not.
 
The Yankees state that they are going to me more careful as they travel from home--the Bronx, where the inoculation rates are very low --to play away games, and their next stop is Kansas City, Missouri, another recent hot spot for the virus.
 
I don’t even know what more to say about this thing.
 
I got the shots, and by April, I was done with my two-shot regimen.
 
I have been pretty healthy—other than my eye, and we still don’t know what caused that!—and I have never had even a feeling of the virus coming upon me.
 
I also had no symptoms at all after I got the two shots, no pain, no dizziness, no weakness, nothing.
 
And I have worn a mask religiously while going out to stores and other places since day one of this thing back in February 2020.
 
Again, I have never had even the least bit of a problem, nor has my immediate family, including my 90-year-old mother.
 
Both my extended family and my wife’s extended family, have contacted the disease, and my father in law died of it while in a nursing home.
 
But knock wood, my immediate family has not had the least bit of a problem with it.
 
I am not saying that you must get the shot; nor am I saying that you must wear a mask.
 
But these things seem to have protected me, at least, or maybe either I am simply not going to get this or, on the other hand, my time is coming.
 
I wish Rizzo, the other Yankee players who have been effected by this virus, and everyone who is suffering from it now a speedy recovery.