My Facebook Memories from 2020 and 2021 are full of posts about #Covid-19. It’s so weird to me how that’s just vanished from the national conversation.
Everyone knew at least one person who died from it, often more than one. Nearly everyone was terrified of dying from it themselves, and the ones who weren’t were burying their heads in the sand. It killed a million Americans in a year and a half—more than every war we’ve fought, combined, for a century and a half. At its height, it was far and away the leading cause of death. It still kills people, albeit at a much reduced rate: far less than the big killers like heart disease and cancer, but about ten times as many as die in motor vehicle accidents. You know, by way of comparison.
And it will happen again. Maybe a new strain of SARS-CoV2, maybe influenza, maybe something else entirely. Something is out there right now, something that doesn’t infect humans, or causes at most mild symptoms, or isn’t easy to catch. Yet. Mindlessly waiting for the next mutation, for its turn.
I don’t know what it’s like in other countries. In the US, we seem to have collectively decided to pretend it never happened. We’re good at that, of course—if we weren’t, the current political landscape would look very different. And I don’t want this to be about politics, but of course it is. When the next plague strikes, and the next after that, and the next after that, our response will depend critically on who’s in charge. Sorry, folks, pathogens don’t care about market-based solutions.
Honest, I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s day. I just can’t quite believe that we’ve all tacitly agreed to this case of national amnesia. But I suppose I don’t have much choice.
@skua Hell, you have to joke about it. You can go nuts otherwise. But collectively forgetting about it is nuts. I’d rather have the jokes. 🙂
@medigoth
There's a couple more things to say.
But it's night here and, I don't know, maybe they'll seem to have more of a place to be said when the sun is up.
(Just watched that Aussie movie Ten Canoes and, well as that French dude said, maybe We've Never Been Modern?)
The sun's up.
Trump lost in the 2020 election because Covid was killing people and sickening more.
No arrival of Covid and Trump was 46. And now wouldn't be setting up to be 47?
Where would anyone's confidence of Trump doing only 2 terms come from?
Those folk who died - their deaths functioned to stop Trump.
There were a lot of them and their dying gave USA not-Trump Biden.
They didn't volunteer. They were drafted. They were injured or killed. And protected America for a time.
@medigoth
The absence of pop songs about the deaths in the initial stage of Covid is another strangeness.
I could yaba on about "maybe normality is a lethal addiction" but I do not understand this "like it never happened" stuff either.
Made a Covid joke though. Felt weird at the time - where are all the "too soon" jokes even?
Here in AU the "at home tests" are called #RapidAntigenTests. (RAT)
A friend said she'd got a negative RAT result.
I said it is good she hasn't turned into a rat.