My mom and dad passed away from Covid within a half hour of each other holding hands in a hospital in Rhode Island on January 19, 2022. I had disobeyed my dad‘s direct orders to never put him in a hospital. I felt that my mom and dad were so strong physically that once they got under a doctors’ care they would have made a comeback. I figured I would get yelled at every time I was at home because I disobeyed dad but I would’ve much rather had them alive. If I knew they were going to die in the hospital I would have let them carry out their wishes because it became apparent as Covid grew worse that they were trying to isolate themselves and die in their home together. It’s just the way they were. When it came to themselves, they seemed fearless.
My mom and dad were diagnosed with Covid the Wednesday before Christmas. Immediately we got them on a monoclonal list. Unfortunately in the state of Rhode Island, there were only two distribution centers and we had to wait eight days. By the time we came to that day they were both already in critical condition in the intensive care unit. What was shocking was that the hospital did not even have monoclonals. And that wasn’t the least of it. Any other possible remedy outside of the protocol was told to me to be impossible. One of the doctors actually said to me to come and get them and take them where I wanted if I did not agree. Can you imagine hearing that from a doctor? She actually said that to me. When I was suggesting to try alternative methods, another asked me why I wouldn’t let them die with dignity? That’s the one time I lost it. How about fighting back by any means necessary and living? Wasn’t that an option?—not when the protocol established from on high said no. But most of the doctors were great. Interestingly enough Sean Hannity— as soon as he found out about my mom and dad— volunteered to fly them to Florida where they could get monoclonals in them. By that time it was too late and my parents would never do that. Let me just pause here and talk a bit about Sean Hannity. He called me every night. He was amazingly knowledgeable on the matter and helped me immensely both as a supportive friend and in evaluating the figures the doctors were giving me— he had a lot of friends and family that had to deal with it. As good as he is at what he does, to me that demonstration meant he is even a better man. And people should know when they see him, the guy has a huge heart.
I could tell by talking to some of the doctors that they understood exactly where I was coming from, but they were handcuffed. There were others just like the one I referenced above, that sounded like they couldn’t care less. I have no bitterness and animosity because, after two years of this, I’m sure one has to develop some type of thick skin. But here is the important point: the whole Covid situation was fought and is still being fought with a strategy of top-down control despite major uncertainties, as opposed to the strategy of the individual decision based on all information. My mom and dad were 92 and 87. And while I don’t even know if I’ve processed the fact that they are gone, the fact that every time a weather situation starts getting kind of crazy my instinct is to call my dad and talk to him. I do know this, that we have generations of young people that have to worry, even if it’s just the slightest amount, about what they put into their bloodstream because other people were dictating to them what they had to do and limiting all the information. One of my dearest friends, a teammate of mine at Penn State, just had his 33-year-old daughter drop dead from a heart attack. It is one thing for a 67-year-old man to lose his mom and dad, but losing your daughter at that age? We are hearing more and more of this. It’s the same thing across the board. I am under the impression just like I wrote in my book that Covid would be a warm-up for what they’re going to try to do with climate. That is not the subject matter here obviously, although my father actually was big in putting that idea in my head. I will close with this: there are some challenges that are put in front of us that are meant for us to respond to in a way that increases our freedom, increases our knowledge, and increases our courage, not the opposite. If you are one nation under God and focused on God then perhaps problems are just that, ways of progressing as a species and getting closer to God. Perhaps there are spiritual undertones in all we are seeing. If I were half the man my dad was I’d be twice the man I am now and he would be the first to tell you that without my mother our family would have been next to nothing. But that is because both of them were brave and selfless, and like the rest of my family, they always look to the higher calling. That is what their American experience taught them to do. As children of immigrants, they were taught this is the land of possibilities, not the land of restrictions and control.
I pray that our nation will get back on that track. Maybe these problems are there so that we respond to the higher calling.