Living in the South During a Pandemic Means Putting Up with “Spreadnecks”

Spreadnecks in Tennessee’s Williamson County heckled and shouted at people in favor of masks, including medical professionals, after a school board meeting during which members voted to reintroduce a mask mandate in elementary schools.

This is part of our Blue Woman in a Red State column

Here we are again, another wave of the Covid-19 variant that sounds more and more like a Transformer. Latest, is the Omicron Variant. This pandemic is starting to look like an era. Let’s face it, it is being prolonged because a health crisis should never have been politicized. Somehow, you’re Blue if you got vaxxed and wear a mask, and you’re Red if you think this is all overblown.

Does it matter here in Tennessee? For a majority of folks, not really. Do I see people in health care worker scrubs, wearing masks, and shirts that say “mask up, I do it for you?” Yes I do. But do people care? No, their “freedom is threatened”.

I just came from a swim meet, an indoor event of about 300 people (give or take 100 coming and going) and I saw probably 2 families (including mine) wearing masks. As you know, California has started masking indoors again. It’s becoming a bit of a joke. Some responsible businesses never stopped requiring them, some even go the extra mile and need proof you are vaccinated before entering their bars or restaurants. In Tennessee, signs that say, “mask recommended” a nice way of asking, but not really getting results. Not these Spreadnecks. Some businesses say, if you are fully vaccinated you don’t need a mask.

I see healthcare workers at the grocery store, wearing masks. And almost every grocery employee wearing them incorrectly. Masks don’t matter as much if you are fully vaccinated. But, according to the data from The Tennessean, less that 42 percent of the people who could be vaccinated, are not.

image from YouTube

A lot of people believe it’s like a giant chicken pox party. If you get a mild case of the ‘vid, then you will build up a natural immunity. What they don’t realize is, people used to die from Chicken Pox or the complications from Chicken Pox, and in my lifetime they came up with a vaccine for it. Ever wonder why kids these days don’t get chicken pox anymore? #TheresAVaccineForThat

According to the Tennessee State Board of Health, since the pandemic started for us in 2020, there have been about 18,000 Covid-19 deaths in the state of Tennessee alone. But since numbers don’t mean anything to anyone anymore – about 3,000 people died on 9-11. Let’s say since March 2020, the first three-thousand people died and then every time you change your Brita filter, another 9-11 proportion event happened. When that water is starting to taste gross, in three months – about 3,000 more people will die. Do that 6 times, and that’s how many people have died from Covid-19 in the state of Tennessee alone.

At the dentist today, everyone in the waiting room was wearing a mask. The assistant asked if the woman who was just called for her appointment had traveled out of state in the last two weeks, or internationally…been around anyone who is coughing, sneezing or showing symptoms. She put the thermometer to her forehead. The woman said no. As she was being walked into the back, the patient asked, “It doesn’t count if my husband has Covid right now does it?”

I heard a gasp from the receptionist, and there was a lot of, “bless your heart”s, which I have come to discover means “you dumb fuck,” but they still let the woman do her dental appointment. At least I think they did, I didn’t see her come back out the way she went in.

I am never going to understand it here. I don’t think I ever will. With their real genuine hospitality, their real kindness to each other, they’ll serve you ice tea on their porches laced with Novel Corona Virus.

For the most part, most meaning 99% – properly vaccinated means no hospital.

No vaccine means most much more likely to end up in the hospital.

One of my very good friends is a nurse and works in the Covid ward of a well-known medical institution in California. She says all the serious cases are the unvaccinated. And the people who are there, who aren’t intubated yet, say to their health care providers it’s the air conditioning that’s made them sick, or they call it pneumonia – not Covid 19.

They. Do. Not. Believe. Their. Own. Bodies.

I mean, do we really just need Nancy Pelosi to say, on Fox News or Facebook “It’s time we all stopped wearing masks and not getting vaccinated so we can spread Covid-19” and everyone will do the opposite. That’s what we have to do? A fucking opposite day? I mean, I have seen some custom made signs on the backs of pick-up trucks telling me that the government isn’t my baby’s daddy. I mean, what kind of people, are compelled to wreck their beautiful new trucks with these custom made stickers? But they won’t take a vaccine that was easier to get and cheaper than buying a Claritin for my pollen allergies.

Now, I know the anti-vax anti-mask ordeal and band of people spreads to hippies and media who don’t believe big pharma – and it takes awhile for the people who love the earth to believe it isn’t flat. But here’s the thing, it is proven (by numbers) that typically Red Counties are more likely to be unvaccinated and unmasked, and so they have the bigly numbers of hospitalized Covid cases.

This means, spreadneck country. It’s the oddest dang thing.

Glossary of Southern Phrases:

“Spreadnecks” – Conservative people who like to spread disease like Covid-19 because Joe Biden told them not to. This is starting to extend to the extreme liberals who don’t take ibuprofen for hangovers.

“Bless your heart” – a saying in the South that means, “you’re a dumb shit”

“I’ll be dang”– a phrase that means, “I’ll be damned” it just sounds funnier.

“The Government” – not your baby’s daddy