First fire, then pestilence, now ash and dust

Wednesday and Thursday morning I stepped outside to go catch my bus, and was promptly hit by the smell of burning. Both times it was actually gone by the time I headed home. The haze wasn't as obvious, but I was able to spot it Thursday morning. Also, by the time I got home Wednesday evening, my poor mother wasn't in a good way at all. We even briefly worried she might have finally caught covid, but the advice nurse seemed pretty sure the ash in the air had just triggered bad hay fever. She started wearing a KN95 even inside the house, which she said helped. It hit my sister hard, too; she collapsed Thursday night and talked about sleeping for 14 hours and missing the Trump indictment.
Both days I went back and forth, even carrying my heavy laptop bag in Wednesday morning and back Thursday evening, and felt perfectly fine. It was later Thursday night my throat suddenly felt terribly sore, and Friday my other health issues started flaring up a bit. It was a very good thing I'm still teleworking on Friday, and even that much exertion, by mid afternoon, left me wanting to pull a Mary Musgrove and spend time laying about on a couch complaining about being ill, even though I didn't really feel sick; I just didn't feel well either. Things have improved today, but I'm definitely spending the weekend in.
It's kind of horrific, honestly, to think that there are parts of the world where this sort of thing is happening constantly. How many people are having to go through their lives feeling constantly ill, and probably then actually getting ill, because usually other people are abusing this planet so badly?