By Thomas Neuburger
I hope all of you enjoyed a safe and happy Season. The year 2021 was in some ways not as hard as 2020, and in some ways even worse.
Most of us got out more in 2021, so the extreme CFS (Cabin Fever Syndrome) most of us were feeling in 2020 was alleviated, at least somewhat. Yet in 2021, as we got a grip on what we were facing, the realization that this could be with us for a while was disheartening to many, even more than the “severe but possibly temporary” mass inconvenience of the initial scary onslaught.
And our media, in its wisdom, sent us to war with each other again.
Covid, like the poor, may always be with us. And also like the poor, the numerous sick and dead may be tolerated at way too high a level, as the under-served global South provides ample hosts so the well-served wealthy North will need endless re-vaccination against endless variants. Certainly our over-served rich, especially those selling pharmaceuticals to those of us with money to afford them, will be glad to see this pandemic as a permanent “income stream,” as the wealthy like to call it.
Covid may outsmart them though. A wise infection doesn’t kill its host, and Covid, at least through the Omicron variant, seems to be learning that. Will a much-weakened, indwelling dominant variant emerge to make Covid, at some point, an over-the-counter treatment problem? We’ll have to see.
I’ll save my thoughts about 2022 for another piece. (My ode to the coming of 2021 is here.)
I’ll save my thoughts about the coming of 2022 for another piece. (My ode to the coming of 2021 is here.) For now, I want to wish all of you — those I know well and those I’ve never met except through these pages — a healthy, productive and relatively sane new year.
I think we’re all looking for ways to dig out, including emotionally. May you each find yours.
(To read all of my work, visit God's Spies at Substack.com. More information here and here.)
since you don't often resort to satire, I'll correct one thing here (an attempt to enlighten those not capable of being enligntened, prolly).
Viruses are not "wise" nor do they "learn". Variants come from completely random mutations. It is PROBABLY as likely that the next variant is even MORE transmissable (as the vector currently proves) since that is what makes it more likely to succeed and, thus, reproduce. Whether the next one is MORE lethal is also a concurrent random mutation. That omicron SEEMS less lethal is happenstance. At some point in the greek alphabet, the likelihood that it becomes MORE lethal is equal to the likelihood that it becomes inert.
Think ebola that is as transmissable as the common…