Corona Blog 2021: Safe This Time!

Anyone with even a smidgen of a sense of civic responsibility is going to be wearing a mask in public spaces for at least the coming year so this won't be changing anytime soon. Myself, I tend to just wear one anytime I'm outdoors, not just in the mandated spaces such as public transportation, shops, doctors' offices, and the like. I do it for couple of reasons: first of all, it's kind of a hassle to keep putting them on and taking them off again so it's no big deal to just leave it, and secondly, I just never know when some random dog-walker, inadvised group of bicyclists, make-up addict who couldn't possibly be expected to obscure painted-on features behind a piece of cloth, or "I don't need a mask because I'm special" type is going to pop out at me from an alleyway or suddenly-opened door, exuding microbes all over the place. 

so why not?
     So, well, back to the situation on the ground. What do I mean when I say it's a "shambles"? Didn't I just point out how easy and straightforward it is to get a corona test? We have a mask mandate in place and we're on lockdown and there's a shiny new curfew; surely that's enough? Well... no. There is so much wrong here I don't even know where to start. A lot of it is rooted, as in much of the rest of the world, in a long-developing disinterest on the part of the public to bother understanding everyday science, coupled with a tendency to believe that the individual bubbles they live in represent the entire universe. Thus, just as everywhere, we're seeing ubiquitous morons walking around with their masks dangling under their noses, or complaining that because they "feel stuffy" people shouldn't be expected to wear them, taking them off to sneeze, all that raging imbecilitude all around us right now, threatening us and those we love. We have class-A dipshits not only failing but outright refusing to comprehend asymptomatic transmission or even get their heads around the crazy idea that a person might be expected to protect those around them in society instead of only thinking about themselves, whining about the safety measures instead of the pathogen, griping about a temporary suspension of some luxuries and indulgences instead of about suffering, and overall acting like spoiled toddlers. It's nauseating. 

wander about the shop without buying anything, and leave - pulling the mask off  by the front and crumpling it up again. One man blew his nose on his between shops... and kept using it. It's almost as though people are trying as hard as possible to catch this virus! I do understand, though, that instead it's just that they can't be bothered trying to learn how not to be stupid about it, because going to any amount of work, no matter how minuscule, in order to protect other people seems to have become anathema to the modern psyche. This is not like seatbelt laws, people: it's not about you. One doesn't get very far, though, trying to explain that in a world in which everything is all about each individual person and none of the rest of us really exist. Society itself, throughout much of the world, has become a sociopathic entity.
     And then we have this. Far too late, three days ago, a curfew was installed. It turned out, you see, that left to their own devices people could not be trusted not to party, not to gather in homes, not to insist on worshiping together in public and everyone else be damned. "But it's hard for people to be lonely", "it's a devastating psychic blow"... these sentiments have been said to death — but that's just it, you know what's lonelier? You know what's a deeper, more permanent psychic blow than being forced to do your socializing verbally, or in writing, or via video chat, or distanced and masked on a walk outdoors? You know what's harder than not seeing your friends in person, not hugging your family members, not getting a manicure, not getting your hair cut, not having coffee out? It's when they die. 

societies are more likely to whine about "freedoms", hop on board the conspiracy theory train, all that jazz — it seems to differ from group to group, area to area, and so on. But regarding our far-too-late curfew, instituted because the half-assed previous measures couldn't stop people from partying, I will say that no matter who it is doing it, the manner of displaying disapproval is reprehensible.
     We have rioting. These are ostensibly protests, but nothing could be farther from the truth. People are assaulting hospitals. A covid testing location was set on fire. Supermarkets are being looted. It's disgusting, and also it's a further sign of just how far apart society has fallen. Common sense is dead, common decency a myth.
     Well, this is cheery so far, so I might as well talk about the vaccine rollout.

     We don't have one. I mean, technically we do, and recently they did start jabbing a few health workers here and there, but everything has a "too little, too late" air about it. Although major sports domes and other locations have been touted as future mass vaccination centers, no mass vaccination is happening. The elderly in homes are supposed to be getting theirs now; as far as I know that's trickling out into reality, but the schedule itself as published on the government website is extremely vague. What about, for example, me? Well, it's unclear whether or not my mild asthma constitutes "high risk", so let's just look at both options. If I am at high risk, then I am supposed to get the Pfizer vaccine sometime "from the middle of February". If, however, I am not considered in the high risk category, I will be expected to get my vaccination "from May" (same as my husband; there are no plans whatsoever to vaccinate my teenager), and it will be the AstraZeneca one, which at the moment hasn't even been approved yet. Super. But that's not even the bad part. The Netherlands has decided (inasfar as it's able to decide anything, given that our government just fell) to join the most of rest of the world in considering delaying the second shot. 

fewer people have it all". Sure, that makes sense on the face of it, but it's not true because it's not the problem. The problem is, according to virologists and epidemiologists, that this is a recipe for creating vaccine resistance. They learned with tetanus, for example, that "significantly" delaying the second shot caused the chances of any particular strain developing vaccine resistance to "skyrocket". Half-protecting more people now vastly increases the chances that by this time next year we will be unable to protect anybody at all. They're trying to kill the vaccine before we can even properly start using it. This frightens me.
     I don't understand why in the face of something this gigantic, this universal, this mishandled, and this horrible people can't make more of an effort to at least develop some common sense. The whole mask debate is just insane — there shouldn't even be a debate. The science is really, really simple! Even if someone doesn't believe in that science, anything anyone could possibly have against wearing them is purely delusional! So what's the fucking harm? I'll tell you what it is. Something people see as worse than (other people's) pain, (other people's) loss, (other people's) extermination.  Personal inconvenience, it's personal inconvenience. Far too many would rather willfully, deliberately not understand that they are causing harm than stop causing that harm, if they would in any way be inconvenienced.
     I don't hear anybody complaining about how "stupid" it is to wash their hands, but show them how two layers of cloth significantly decrease droplet transmission, and they'll spend far longer screaming "bullshit" and "but I have rights" than it would've taken them to put on a damn mask in the first place. Another example of an absolutely staggering lack of sense is public interpretation of the 15-minute rule. Most of the tracing apps are based on the idea that if you spend 15 minutes around someone carrying the virus, you've been exposed to enough of a viral load that you should take precautions in case you've been infected. That doesn't sound very complicated to me. 

barista, walk across the street (hugging a few schoolchildren on the way) to yak it up with your neighbor buddy Sarah while you both drink your coffees for 13 minutes, and hey presto, no viral transmission — because none of those encounters were 15 minutes long! People don't seem to be able (or willing?) these days to comprehend concepts like "cumulative", "variable", or anything else that involves taking responsibility for one's own thinking. "Tell me what to do, it's too hard to figure things out on my own," they cry, and then, "but not that, no! That's not what you were supposed to tell me to do. You are wrong and I will not do it." No wonder something as evolutionarily clever, as devastatingly adaptable, as terrifyingly transmissible as a coronavirus is finding us to be remarkably easy meat.
     It's really not hard. If everybody — everybody! — follows the rules and uses common sense, we can beat this. If things go on as they are, however, we are going to find out what a real plague looks like, one that takes out hospitals, infrastructure, communications, communities, neighborhoods, cities. Protests, riots, parties, festivals, sporting events, schools, concerts, and every single point of gathering shall mark anew the beginning of the countdown. There is no magic way to get together without resetting the clock, there is no privileged state of intention, no "special case" situation, no exception, which a microbe is going to take into account. It doesn't matter how tired you are of how raggedy your hair looks, it doesn't matter how much your grandmother misses you, it doesn't matter how long it's been since you partied down or had a blow job or went to church, the virus isn't going to look at you and say, "Gosh, this one is special. This one is so righteous that I shall withhold myself from the invasion of the cells, shall let this golden child proceed free of the taint of my presence". Every time someone makes a mistake, every time someone decides the rules don't apply to them — the rules of science and virology, not the rules of government and might, which often lag behind in this regard — people are going to sicken, people are going to die, and as long as nobody looks around them, looks behind them, to see the ripples of their own actions, it will not stop. We don't get to catch our breath, tell the illness to pause, give us a time out, wait while we do "just one more thing". It doesn't work like that and no amount of opinionating will change it.
     Once again, it isn't difficult. It isn't complicated. It isn't mysterious. It isn't even something new. We've done this before… better. I'm tired of being disappointed in people and afraid, and I'm tired of those two things being intrinsically connected. Here it is again, louder for the back:

you sensible people, not you kind people, not you people who can look farther into the wide world than your own asshole – I see you, I see you working harder than you should have to, being more frightened then you should need to be, holding it all together for everyone else; your value is indisputable).
     I see that this is more of a rambling expression of frustration than a proper blog entry, but so what? We all need to let off a little steam sometimes, right? What can I say, I wasn't really trying to make some kind of point, specifically, or provide any solutions, and the subject matter is grim. I guess I'll just close with a story, something that happened a week ago.

     I had just been to the ergotherapist about my hand and was on my way home. It was recycling day, and I was glad that I already had a mask on because people were popping randomly out of houses everywhere to take out their bins. At one point, a cat ran by, in that flippy way some cats have sometimes, like they're being pursued in fits and starts by some partially-amusing phantom, and slipped under an alleyway gate. When I lifted my eyes again I found myself looking at a woman who was staring at me. There was an awkward pause, and I started to say something about the cat, thinking perhaps she had seen me follow it with my eyes and wondered what was going on. But no, suddenly she blurted out, "I want to thank you so much that you are wearing a mask." I said something along the lines of aww shucks more people should, and the floodgates opened. Her father had died the day before, of covid-19. She was appalled, and furious, and bewildered at public resistance to the most basic of safety measures and blamed this for her father's death. Moreover, it was now early in the morning the day after, and nothing was right.
     I remember the morning my grandfather died, on another continent, my grandfather who raised me and was the most important person in my life along with his wife and my husband and child. I had to go to work anyway. I remember standing on the train, frozen in a grief-stricken bubble, confused by the necessity to maintain some kind of socially-acceptable neutrality, to be unremarkable, to be a piece of train-furniture. Stunned. I remember that if someone spoken to me, anyone, I would have told them all about it because it was intolerable, existing in that separate world inside a universe completely disaffected. It was the same when I had to go to work directly from the vet the day we had our beloved dog put down. So I knew how she felt, this woman who had woken up into a separated world, a new universe, and what I could mean to her just by being there. She told me that everything was the same and everything was different and she couldn't make that make sense. It was obscene. She got up, like always, got the kids breakfast, like always, put on their insipid shows, like always, and yet nothing was like always.
     I wanted desperately to hug her, and I told her so, but obviously I couldn't. I walked on home, wishing I could do something for her — food would be inappropriate right now, a card trite and forgettable, and me a stranger anyway. But I just couldn't take the thought of her there home by herself with her small children, whose dynamic would be so at odds with her needs, hour after hour, and I needed to do something. She doesn't know me, I don't know her, so I decided to do it anonymously. Otherwise, she would be forced into the position of having to make small talk, thanking me, trying to pull from her grief-paralyzed mind basic social graces. That would be cruel. In a gesture as old as humanity itself, I decided to paint her a rock. I picked one of my favorites from the garden and I was about to put a heart on it but I decided that under the circumstances I heart would be both too personal and too impersonal at the same time. 

                Stay safe, my friends, and be well. It may not seem like it now, but this too shall pass, and we will someday build a greater society than this paltry excuse, one with community and beauty and love in which all are seen, and valued.