Opinion: Covid-19 pandemic has nothing on my near-death experiences

Mike O’Connor has survived another year of the Covid-19 pandemic – which is no big deal when you consider his lifetime of near-death experiences.

Having endured two home quarantines, I have to admit that I’m not particularly looking forward to the third.

The experts tell me, however, that it’s coming with the same certainty that they tell me that eventually I will be infected to some degree with a Covid-19 strain so I’ll line up for my booster shots next week and hope for the best.

I’ve had measles, tonsillitis, double pneumonia, peritonitis, melanoma, several hernias and once broke five ribs when I fell off a camel, one of which pierced my chest cavity and eventually came uncomfortably close to killing me.

Then there was that MGB sports car that I rolled when my love of speed exceeded my driving abilities. It had no roll bar and no seatbelts and I crawled from the wreck with only a scratch on my hand to show for it.

I should have been killed when a storm struck yacht on which I was crewing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and I found myself on the bowsprit with one hand reefing down the jib and the other clinging to the boat for dear life as the bow buried itself in the sea.

Then there was that time I slipped when jumping from the dock to another boat and my arm became entangled in the mooring line.

It was late at night and there was no one around so there I was hanging by one arm, unable to reach back to the dock and not heavy enough to pull the boat towards me.

Someone found me eventually and the doctor said that if I’d been left hanging there for much longer I would have lost my arm.

I’ve fallen up and down more steps than I can count and always managed to bounce and somehow avoided death by electrocution when I was hurled across the room and left in a tangle of limbs after trying to repair a washing machine without first turning off the power.

Then there was that time I sat on a stool which promptly collapsed – which wouldn’t have mattered so much if someone hadn’t left a broken glass beneath it.

The doctor who stitched me up said another centimetre to the left and I would have severed an artery and bled to death.

The Covid-19 testing queue at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital yesterday. Picture: Richard Walker

So like the rest of us, I await the latest challenge which life will toss my way. I’ll be a good boy and wear my face mask even though much of the scientific material that I read tells me that they are at best a security blanket and largely useless.

I’ll suffer the incomprehensible dictates of government because quite frankly, I’ve become so exhausted by the whole Covid-19 debate that I’m too tired to argue any more. Attempting to find logic and reason behind the happenings of the last year is a short cut to madness so I’ve given up trying.

In any case, anyone who has not made up their minds by now as to who are the goodies and baddies in their dealings with the pandemic just isn’t trying hard enough.

Was there once a time when people talked about something other than boosters and infection rates? I’m sure there was but it seems so long ago that I can no longer remember what it was like.

We’ve endured more than our fair share of fear over the past few years. Fear has been the dominant emotion – fear of infection, fear of being locked down, fear of being locked out and if we are brutally honest with ourselves, a fear of death.

It’s time to put fear aside as we move into 2022 and accept the hand that fate will give us. We’ll deal with the politicians as we see fit when the time comes but we can’t let them frighten us any longer.

We’ve done what we can and followed the rules, often not because we believed in the efficacy of the mandates but out of a sense of civic responsibility and we have come to the end of that road We’ve now got lives to live, people to love, children to cherish and sunsets to watch so let’s get on with it and turn our backs on the fearmongers.

Every year in December, my late father would predict that the forthcoming Christmas would be his last. He did this for 20 years and eventually, back in 2006, he was right.

We will all face our last Christmas eventually, but it wasn’t this year, and I’m betting that it won’t be the next.

Here’s to a happy and healthy new year for us all.