People are invested in their arguments. And it is literally killing them.

From the Daily memphian:

She just wanted to be close to her husband, just wanted to be near him as he struggled to live.

Danton Barto was on a ventilator, his body fighting desperately against COVID-19. Shelly Beth Barto had tested positive herself.

So she drove to the hospital parking lot and sat in her car alone.

“I’m right here baby,” she posted. “I’m right here. I didn’t know what else to do so I came to the hospital and I’m sitting in the parking lot, looking at this building wondering where you are. You always said you could feel me. Please baby please feel me right now. Fight Danton . . . take my strength baby, please.”

It was impossibly sweet and utterly heartbreaking.

And it was, tragically, not enough.

Barto, the leading tackler in Memphis football history, died of COVID-19.

That doesn’t make him exceptional. Barto is one of 627,000 Americans who have died — alone in their hospital rooms — because of this disease.

But, please, let this death be the one.

Let this death be the one that nudges you to get vaccinated.

Especially now that the FDA has given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine, let this death be the one that inspires you to roll up your sleeve and save your life.

Don’t do it for me or any of the others who have been hectoring you for the past few months.

Danton Barto was the leading tackler in Memphis football history. Do it for Danton Barto, No. 59, as tough a linebacker as there ever was.He was quick and fearless and indestructible. He was the heartbeat of the defense that was the heartbeat of the team.

He finished at Memphis, played in the CFL, coached an arena team to a championship.

He got married, became a father, divorced and fell in love again.

Shelly Beth told me their story a week ago. Just hearing it, I could tell they were crazy in love.

He asked her out by text the first time. She said she was free the next few days.

“No, I mean in an hour,” he texted back.

And then they were off.

That’s how Barto was, direct and headlong.

But when it came to getting vaccinated, he took his time.

“We talked about it a lot,” Shelly Beth said. “But we just hadn’t done it. We weren’t against it, but we weren’t for it, either. We just didn’t know.”

This does not make them unusually conflicted or unusually stubborn. Even with the recent burst of vaccinations, fewer than half of Tennesseans who are eligible have been vaccinated.

It’s an astonishing failure of our society — and of social media, in particular — that we have arrived at this place. That presented with the opportunity to safeguard ourselves in a worldwide pandemic, more than half of us have said, “Nah, I’ll pass.”

So we read an endless stream of stories about people dying in the hospital, lamenting their decision to not be vaccinated. But still, the stories don’t stop.

Saturday, it was Phil Valentine, a Nashville radio host and vocal vaccine skeptic. He declined to get vaccinated because his chances of dying were “way less than one percent.” When he was first infected with the virus, he said he “may take a day off just as a precaution.”

Then, after Valentine was hospitalized and put on a ventilator, his brother urged everyone to get the vaccine.

The Bartos are victims of people like Valentine, people who have turned this into just another issue with “two sides.”

At this point, the decision about whether to be vaccinated is emotional more than rational. People are invested in their arguments. And it is literally killing them.

An average of 20,000 Tennesseans a day are getting vaccinated, nearly double what it was back on July 4. But to get to 51 percent of those eligible, we’ll need 200,000 more to get vaccinated. That’s 10 more days at 20,000 a day just to get to more than half the Tennesseans who are eligible.

So let this case be the one that persuades you. Let this be the one that causes you to rethink.

Barto wasn’t an old man. He has a son who desperately loves him. He just got remarried, back in March. He and Shelly Beth reveled in their adventures. They should have had decades of adventures ahead.

Instead, he spent the last days of his life alone in the hospital, while Shelly Beth sat alone in her car outside.

My friend John Stacy, a longtime Tigers fan, is starting a campaign to get Barto’s No. 59 retired. That seems like a worthy cause.

A more immediate way to honor Barto would be to get the shot that would have saved his life.

Wouldn’t it be great if 59 Memphis fans got vaccinated for Barto? And then 5,900? And then 5,900 more? Wouldn’t it be great if every Tigers fan who was at “College GameDay” on Beale Street committed to get vaccinated? Every Tigers fan who ever stepped into the Liberty Bowl?

The guy was an inspirational player. Let him inspire us one last time.

Wouldn’t it be great if 59 Memphis fans got vaccinated for Barto? And then 5,900? And then 5,900 more? Wouldn’t it be great if every Tigers fan who was at “College GameDay” on Beale Street committed to get vaccinated? Every Tigers fan who ever stepped into the Liberty Bowl?

The guy was an inspirational player. Let him inspire us one last time.

“Whatever you do, baby, get vaccinated,” he texted Shelly Beth from the hospital. “Get that shot for me.”

Last Edited by PhysicalGeographer on 08/24/2021 09:18 AM