What Do We Do Now?
Before we get into the more serious stuff in this post, I want to make a proposal. I think we should start naming variants of COVID like we name hurricanes. Delta, Omicron, Omega… they all sound so stuffy and scientific. And listen, COVID is serious business. But using extinct Greek letters (or Roman or whatever the hell they are) that are hard to pronounce for some people doesn’t help. If anything, it makes them sound like fiction. The latest one, OMICRON, sounds like a Transformer. It’s silly.
But hey, did you hear about the Becky Variant? Scary, nasty stuff. Look out for that Becky Variant. See? I feel like that’s better. And maybe we get creative and start using names that kind of reflect the bad aspects of the variant. Like maybe the Ginger Variant impacts redheads more. Lots of fun stuff here.
We can even open this up to corporate sponsorship. And before you say “hey, I don’t think companies are going to want to be associated with something as bad as COVID” remember that these are the same corporations who buy ads during NFL games. They sponsor MMA fights. They lobbied to legalize gambling. Some of them sell addictive, deadly drugs. As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. From what I’ve heard, the Walmart Variant is particularly bad. But not as bad as the PornHub Variant.
I think this could work!
In all seriousness though, I’m not sure what to do anymore. We’ve been two years into this shitshow and it feels like nothing has gotten better. Yes, we have the vaccines now. That’s good. But infections are on the rise. By a huge amount. Take a look at yesterday!
Granted, there was a bit of a backlog from the weekend. But 1.3 MILLION people testing positive?!? Seems like a lot no matter what! Just a few days ago we had another million positives day. We’re averaging 700k cases per day. Even if the omicron variant isn’t as deadly, that’s still going to lead to a lot of hospital admissions and deaths. Healthcare workers and facilities have been running at their max for almost 2 years now. Something has to give.
Here are the stats as of 1/10/22: nearly 62 millions Americans have gotten COVID. Of them, roughly 840,000 have died. We’re averaging a death toll of about 1,300 people every day. That means if you get COVID, you have a 1.5% chance of dying. Seems really low. But let’s add some context. The high school I teach at has 2,000 students. If everyone here got COVID and the death rates were applicable across all age groups (it’s not) that would mean we’d lose 26 students. Imagine that degree of loss? If something preventable killed 26 students you bet your ass there would be something drastic done about it. And yet, we’ve been coping with this for 2 years now.
The biggest number we have to focus on is 63, as in 63% of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated. That’s not nearly enough. This isn’t so much about stopping the spread of COVID. I think that ship has sailed. But if we can get somewhere around 90% of people vaccinated it’ll cut down on the number of deaths and hospitalizations big time.
It boggles my mind that after almost a year of having a FREE and SAFE vaccine our numbers are still so low. There was a lot that could have been done before we got here to make sure people took the vaccine. But the anti-science crowd has had a major impact. Not to mention Republicans who cravenly advocate against a vaccine they’ve taken so Democrats will look bad. It’s pure political calculation that when the midterms roll around at the end of the year and COVID is still raging that Democrats will be voted out. It’s bizarre that the arsonists are complaining about all the fires.
I’m not sure what to do. I really think if we try to enforce a nationwide vaccine mandate it will lead to violence. Maybe not a full-blown civil war but it’ll be ugly. How are supposed to enforce something like that? Are we going to make people working in businesses enforce it? Will the government go door-to-door asking to see people’s vaccine cards? And what’s the punishment for people who refuse? There are so many thorny and untenable issues with this that I don’t think it’s realistic to even think about.
Mask mandates are something that could be used as an alternative. But again, we come up against many of the same issues. What do we do with the people who won’t follow the rules? Arrest them? Fine them? Shoot them on sight? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get all of the TEACHERS I work with to wear a mask all day? Nevermind getting the thousands of teenagers to do it. Remember, a sizable minority of people in America don’t believe in the dangers of COVID or think that masks and vaccines are necessary. And studies have shown that forcing people to believe in it doesn’t work, nor does shaming or yelling at them. Thousands upon thousands of people will happily go to jail over this. They would love to become COVID martyrs. Many of them have died already.
So where does this leave us? Not in a great place, as the stats above have shown. We are a divided nation is so many ways. And COVID is just the latest example of how bad it is. You’d think that a deadly pandemic killing almost a million of our fellow citizens would be enough to bring us together. But no. We are as fractured as ever.
I am pretty much at the point where I feel like I will get COVID at some point. I am fully vaxxed and boosted so hopefully it won’t be too bad. But it might kill me. Or you. Or your parents. Or your children. Our odds improve greatly if we get vaccinated, which is why I did. There is a part of me that feels like we should just stop all the masking and distancing and just see what happens. We know what’ll happen. Lots of people will get sick, hospitals will get overwhelmed, and many people will die. Will another wave of mass deaths do anything to change the circumstances? I don’t know. But it’ll assuredly kill off many of the anti-vax crowd.
One talking point I am sick of hearing is that a lot of the COVID deaths are from people who were already not in the best health to begin with. I’m not sure why that matters, especially in a place like the USA. I mean, have you seen us? We’re a nation of walking comorbidities. Besides, even if I have a terminal cancer diagnosis and get by a bus it’s the bus that killed me. The cancer is irrelevant. Death is still death. A loss is still a loss.
Where do we go from here? I don’t have the answer. Take care of yourself and your family. Try to convince people you know who are unvaccinated to get vaccinated. Wear a mask when you’re around other people. There isn’t a whole lot beyond that. Selfish people are forcing us to make selfish decisions. There is another wave of sickness and death about to crash upon us. Perhaps this will be the one to turn the tide.