COVID Isn’t OVER
The other day I encountered the first person who tried to shake my hand, and then the second, and then the third.
When I refused, his sentiment was obvious: “Corona is over, it was fake all along, you are still taking it seriously, wow, I didn’t take you to be that type.”
I spent the weekend mired in a profound sense of sadness and disappointment at our collective inability to think rationally in the face of the most urgent encounter with death of my lifetime, a confrontation with a novel strain of corona virus that has already exacted a steep price on human life and on human well-being.
What is most troubling is that we seem to have lost sight of the fact that we are still in the midst of this battle for human lives: perhaps at the close of the first quarter, hopefully at half time.
We suffered a harrowing first wave, largely in part to our late response, and perhaps exacerbated the problem from an economic standpoint, by our governments over-response, shuttling things down for too long and without any nuance as to who or why needed to shut down.
That said, not much has changed about the situation. We have a few more supplies perhaps, slightly improved testing, and for now a massive reduction in cases but beyond that we are very much at the same point we were at in March- a few cases away from the next explosion.
To make matters worse, it seems that most people have completely lost the script and that our insatiable need for human contact, thirst for fun, crippling bravado and hubris have rendered us completely incapable of rationale thought.
We alone are not guilty. The world around us, the media and the protesters too, have grown bored with the corona narrative and have thrown themselves completely off the rails.
The reality is that if we are to escape this virus with limited loss of life we need to keep our eye on the ball.
Do not shake hands, maintain space while interacting, do not expose older people, create an environment where those who are looking out for the collective good are respected as opposed to chided.
This is not rocket science.
We need a concerted collective effort to stay safe.
