I worked fire season in the River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho, last summer (2020). You might have seen a photo or two I posted from that adventure. But two quick observations before a couple of stories. OBS #1. I saw very few masks anywhere in Idaho last summer. OBS #2. I saw lots and lots of guns - sidearms - in Idaho last summer.
Story 1: In late August of last year, I was in a small feed/seed & hardware store in rural Idaho, near the Salmon river. I was wearing a mask. There was a fellow in the checkout line ahead of me with what looked like a .45 automatic in a fancy holster, slung low from his cowboy belt. He wore no mask, so I could see his contemptuous sneer when he asked me, "What are you afraid of?"
In retrospect, I should have answered, "I am afraid of dangling prepositions, cowboy," but I didn't. I said instead, looking down at his gun and fancy holster, "What is it that you fear, sir?" I was wearing US Forest Service fire rags: Kevlar tactical fire pants, USFS fire crew t-shirt, FIRE on my ball cap; so I had to be civil.
I am told that lots of folks in that little town, especially the older men, do not exists anymore. It is a hotbed of COVID now. COVID victims everywhere.
Story 2: Last week there was an airplane crash in the Idaho wilderness, not too far from the fire lookout where I worked in 2020. There were three passengers and a pilot in the Cessna T-206. Once the wreckage was located in extremely rugged terrain, emergency crews had to rappel from a helicopter to reach the crash site. Two passengers were dead, another passenger was pinned in the wreckage. The pilot was alive, but had life-threatening injuries. To keep the story simple, the trapped passenger died shorly after he was removed from the airplane wreckage.
The surviving pilot was hoisted out on a basket litter by the big helo, and flown a few hundred yards to a medical evac helicopter that waited in a makeshift LZ. The medical evac helo lifted off and headed for the nearest trauma hospital in Boise. Shortly after leveling off and establishing a flight course to Boise, the medical evac helicopter was notified that no hospital in the Boise area would accept the crash victim. The hospitals were operating way over capacity, treating COVID victims.
So the helicopter turned east and headed for Idaho Falls. Thus, the sole survivor of the aircraft crash had to be flown to Idaho Falls, which was much farther away than Boise, because of COVID victims.
Idaho is a land of mask-holes and anti-vaxxers. And lots of guns. And lots of COVID victims.
Did you see what I did there? Italics for the word victim wherever it followed COVID. Christine Lavin wrote and performed a song in 1990, Victim/Volunteer. It juxtaposes victims and volunteers throughout the song. Sometimes fucking victims.
There is one couplet in the song that nails these COVID volunteers: the QAnoners, the anti-vaxxers, the maskholes, the tinfoil-hatters (with or without UFO infestations) .. all of those who aid and abet this lethal virus and some of whom die doing so (but really, seriously .. just fuck them at this point). Lavin sings:
He's not a victim of UFO infestation
He's a volunteer
So let's start differentiating between COVID victims and COVID volunteers. Call 'em that. You volunteered for this buddy, by maskless, vaxxless disregard for human life.
Too bad if you're a victim but whatever you do
Don't volunteer
Why would ya volunteer?
Please don't volunteer!
-- Christine Lavin 1990
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