I fear COVID will be a winter landmine. Only worse. As fall approaches I wonder: once we get inside with our new found mask-less “freedom” will the elephant in the room stomp even more of us to death? Unless we enforce vaccine cards or 
mask rules: likely. Of course a different kind of hell will follow. You know: the childish anti-mask tirades and violent Reich wing resistance. Why one might think they were being shot 7 times in the back rapid fire, or knee-d to death instead of having a simple piece of cloth across their face, or having to prove they’re not a possible danger to others,
Are there better examples of white privilege? Not many.
SERIOUSLY, why aren’t we planning for this possibility NOW? We know COVID is mutating. “Quite clever this beastie is,” saith intellectual Yoda. People not getting that close, wearing masks? I think if COVID could talk it would say, “OK I’ll be even more infectious.” Vaccines? “OK, let’s work on getting around that!” Not as problematic for the young; those with stronger immune systems? “I worked on that! Done! Now let’s make it even worse.”
One hell of a deadly game of chess, and I fear if allowed to keep mutating the final checkmate may be closer than we think.
Meanwhile there are so many COVID helpers. Many of them say that only a small percentage die, as if their lives should mean far less to people who often consider themselves “pro-life.” Well, I suspect COVID is mutating to take care of that too. “A small percentage” FOR NOW. Anti maskers and anti-vaxxers are enabling this because that’s the way viruses work.. Complex organisms evolve unevenly, yet overall over a long period of time. A virus doesn’t have that complexity problem, in comparison.
Last winter, last spring so many of us adjusted to masks, distancing, not being in big groups, doing what we must to stay safe. It won’t be as easy this time due to the large numbers of politically motivated deniers and those crazy enough to think masking is like being in chains. Interesting, considering “chains” was something most of THEIR ancestors never experienced like on the scale others did. And something some of their ancestors forced on those “others.”
So as we snuggle, go to the store, go to movies, go to school, to the bar, to football games, COVID is getting ready… for the fertile ground: US. We are its huge Petri dish. We have gleefully taken off the masks. (Am I merely one of the few who still wear, occasionally, and feel safer wearing them? One of the few who don’t find them that uncomfortable, but find myself uncomfortable not wearing them?) Gleefully started shaking hands and hugging again? (Same uncomfortable, this Yoda feels.) As we do all this and more COVID is still in the trench; growing stronger, ready to banzai us? (No insult intended towards Japanese, just a convenient image.)
Why is it a foreboding feeling fills me? Why I seem to be the only one who is reading the foreshadowing in the shadows of last winter that seem to linger?
Damn, I hope I’m wrong.
Courtesy Namraknec
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years, first published in fall of 1972. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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