Thursday, January 19, 2023

I Consider Myself Pretty Thick-Skinned, So If I'm Annoyed I Can Only Guess How This Affects More Sensitive People

Overnight, my brother died. The cause: A massive brain bleed. After mentioning a headache, he collapsed and never regained consciousness.

So, of course, a non-trivial portion of comments on my mentioning this (on Facebook) run along the lines of:

"Was it the jab? Could it have been the jab? I bet it was the jab. He shouldn't have got the jab."

TL;DR: It almost certainly wasn't the jab -- and seriously, what the fuck, people? Can't you let someone mention that his or her loved one just died without having to work your own pet hypotheses into it? Condolences are appreciated. Silence is acceptable.

The longer version:

In the 1990s, my brother collapsed with a brain aneurysm, from which he fully recovered (enough to graduate the police academy where he collapsed).

A few years ago, while looking at/for something else, doctors discovered six aortic aneurysms.

He obviously had some kind of predisposition to that kind of thing, and if I'd had to place a bet on his manner of death, it would have been that.

Due to injuries sustained in the Marine Corps, he had difficulty walking, and was overweight.

While he was nominally cooperative with doctors on medications, procedures, etc., he ate what he damn well pleased and did the things he damn well enjoyed and was capable of doing.

My understanding is that while yes, he was vaccinated for COVID-19, it was early on in the first wave of eligibility (disabled veteran) and he didn't bother with the boosters. So it's basically been two years since he had "the shot."

He and I discussed death numerous times over the last few years as our parents and older brother died. His attitude was that he was in no hurry for it, but also not especially worried about its inevitability; he just hoped it would be reasonably quick and mostly painless. That seems to be how it went. We pays our money and we takes our chances.

I'm not interested in agonizing over whether "the shot" might conceivably have had something to do with it. If you are, for fuck's sake do so with someone else.

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