Once you’ve sung to your brother as he dies in your arms, then you can tell me you don’t believe in vaccines

My brother died in a hospital ICU.

I’m so done with all the BS reasons others give for not doing what’s right for their fellow man.

So many people have no first-hand knowledge of what COVID-19 does to a loved one and to a family. They have no idea what it is like to see your loved one — who was immunosuppressive, who was vaccinated, who did everything right — not be able to defeat the Delta variant of COVID.

A variant that is a product of those who failed to get vaccinate.

My brother, Daniel Norman Hidalgo, is gone because so many people listen to fools and not their own doctors. And because the fools want to make this political instead of caring for others.

Stop all this condescending, self-righteous nonsense.

When you visit your brother in the hospital for 32 days and see how treacherous COVID-19 is...

When you hold your brother in your arms as his heart beats slower and slower for four hours after you make the decision to disconnect...

When you rock him like a baby and sing to him...

When you tell him it’s OK to let go...

When you take a washcloth and clean his face and chest...

When you kiss his forehead one last time...

When you donate his body to the Anatomical Gift Association...

When you leave a hospital with his belongings in your hands...

When you can no longer share anything with him...

When you feel physical pain all over because you ache for him...

Then. Then tell me that this is all just politics. Then explain to me why you are so willfully ignorant that you listen to the host of a talk show before your doctor.

And when you fall to this enemy yourself, contracting COVID-19, I honestly don’t want to hear you lament that you should have gotten vaccinated or should have worn a mask. You made a choice to suffer and maybe die.

Stay home, in the same aggressive spirit of denial, and deal with it. Those hospital beds are needed for everyone else. Medical staff is exhausted. You can hear it in their voice and see it in their eyes.

The doctors, nurses and other caretakers at the University Of Illinois Hospital in Chicago cried with me. They cared for my brother, who died on Sept. 13. They hoped when he had good days that he would make it over the hump. All of us wanted him to come home with me.

May God forgive your selfishness. I never will.

I’m so done with all of you who are allowing this thing to mutate, who are infecting the rest of us, who are leaving us with grief and a broken heart.

None of you know what you’re talking about. None of you.

Mercedes Hidalgo is a paralegal who lives in Milwaukee.

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