It’s been one year to the day since I last saw my dad. Today’s his birthday.

On his birthday last year, I stopped by on my way to work and spent a few minutes with him, laughing and talking, and then we hugged and I went on about by day, never knowing that weeks later he’d be on a ventilator in the hospital dying of covid-19.

I wrote a blog post about that, and it went viral. I was on three local news broadcasts talking about it, and the ABC affiliate’s story was picked up and broadcast on local stations nationwide. I had a full page in Hearst newspapers nationwide. A reporter from the New York Times called me.

I was one of the first “Put a human face on it” news stories about covid. I literally told millions of people to be afraid, knowingly allowing myself to be used as a tool of propaganda, because I thought it would jar people into taking sensible precautions.

So what do I think of all of this pandemic stuff now? I don’t. Not much. I got sick to death of hearing people argue about the pandemic so I quit paying attention to it. Life goes on. No sense in absorbing a steady stream of speculation masquerading as information. It never changes anything. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what to do. I’d rather focus on other things.

I wrote a much longer post about this earlier today, and I scrapped it because who cares? Blah blah blah, it’s all been talked to death at this point.

Bottom line: be smart, but don’t outsmart yourself. And happy birthday, dad.