In a ranting mood . . .
Could there possibly be a more insidiously perfect disease than Covid for the times we live in?
—It doesn’t kill most people, so anyone can discount their personal risk.
—When it does kill, it’s often older people or those with pre-existing conditions, so healthy people of a certain age can rationalize that this is only the natural progression of things.
—The serious long-term disabilities it causes are infrequent enough to allow many people to justify rolling the dice.
—It’s a novel virus, so it’s taken medical science some time—including some early inconsistent advice—to develop a consensus about best methods to combat it . . . which allows honest skeptics, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxers to pounce on every trivial inconsistency as proof that the science is muddled.
—It most likely originated in a foreign country, which allows xenophobes to first deny that it’s here in the U.S. and then to absolve the initial cluster-f**ked response of accountability.
—Combating it requires some level of inconvenience, care for others and personal sacrifice to protect the most vulnerable . . . which many people apparently believe triggers an existential choice between freedom from oppression or freedom from “just a bad case of the flu.”
—Getting life back to normal will require nations and businesses to assure their citizens and customers that they are being protected from exposure or reinfection . . . but vaccination cards? Why, we’re just letting the camel’s nose under the tent!
In a just world, Darwinism would eventually sort out who’s right and who’s wrong about a killer pandemic. People would make their choices and live with the consequences without harming their families or neighbors. But there’s nothing just about Covid; it’s too perfectly tailored for the 21st century, almost as if it’s evolved to attack us on both our psychological and cellular vulnerabilities. Only in our befuddled world can a virus kill 2.5 million—half a million in the US alone—close international borders, hammer economies, destroy industries, shutter schools and sports franchises and there still be serious arguments over something as basic as the value of vaccination cards.
