There is no going back to the pre-pandemic world. Because we are at war with a virus, it has only one aim – to reproduce. If the host dies or is cursed with health problems for life, it cannot care because the organism has no capacity for such concepts.
Currently, the humans are split into two camps. Pro COVID (PCs) and the Anti COVID (AC). ACs want to stop the spread. So they do what they can to prevent other people from getting infected. Often this is done at a sacrifice of cutting down face to face interactions. But, as with any war, the sacrifice is sharper as you defend the economic ladder. Both as individuals and as nations.
PCs don’t view the virus as a threat. For some, it’s just a cold. They don’t care about preventing the spread. Instead, they see curbs on their activity as an attack on their freedoms. For the underclasses, the divide is stark – die of the disease or die of starvation.
For the moment, vaccines have provided a sandbagged shelter. Some can make it through an infection without needing a ventilator or an undertaker. But, unfortunately, what vaccines don’t do is prevent the spread of the disease.
The spread helps the virus mutate. So we are not stuck in a catchup arms race. However, don’t expect the pharmaceutical companies to develop something that kills the spread. That’s killing a juicy revenue stream.
For the PCs, none of this is of any concern. They do not see the war. At the most it’s an attack on freedoms rather than health. ACs are stuck in a sea of worry. How to survive in an economic sense. How to curb the spread. How to avoid getting sick.
What’s troubling at the moment is the current PCs dismissal of Omicron as “mild”. Mild compared to dying? Developing behaviours to curb the spread is left out of the conversation. At the same time, maintaining some level of economic activity. That’s hard to deal with. It’s better to go clubbing if you can still afford it.
To use a convoluted historical metaphor, the humans are like the Germans at Stalingrad. They had captured 80-90% of the city. Then they were trapped. Encircled by massive Soviet armies that crashed through their weak flanks.
Those weak flanks are the lack of behaviours to prevent the spread. What’s going to crash through the flanks is a killer variant that ignores the vaccines.
At this point, I don’t see a way out or an end to this war. Do you?
Cerno 
Definitely AC. Not getting vaccinated is simply utter selfishness and possibly having an sense of being special – because celebrity, money or whatever.
If you don’t vaccinate and then you are harbouring the virus, and the longer it hangs around the more it mutates. Omicron might not be as ‘serious’ (can a country with a couple of hundred ICUs really afford to take this stance?), but the next one might not be.
One are that is not being highlighted at all are the longer term affects to the economy from so many people being incapacitated to various degrees after recovering.
‘Long Covid’ is hardly being mentioned, yet so many who had Covid have not fully recovered. I caught it in April 2021, no symptoms apart from a total loss of smell and taste, and it still hasn’t come back (probably about 40 – 50% recovered), it may take up to a year, or it may not recover at all – quite a depressing thought. Coffee and red wine – two of my favourite things – taste like brewed cigarette butts. Still, taking out the garbage and cleaning up dog poo is smell free!
I still get very tired for no reason – not as bad as the initial months – when I took me an entire day to hoover three rooms in our home, with frequent lie downs! – and lose about an hour or two each day. There is brain fog and general apathy and depression.
I have a good idea of how I got it, both of us working in schools means we are also on another ‘front line’. Parents were self medicating, hiding at home from the PHI (with the help of their doctor friends) and sending their children to school. The vaccine gives you a fighting chance, but without the vaccine it only takes one slip up – after a year of being careful.
And even now I know people who have not had a single jab.
Apart from this type of simple stupidity, we are not as bad those in richer countries.
May be because we are used to vaccinations as a result of living in the tropics, or simply we are pragmatic and know we do not have the resources of richer countries in terms of medical facilities, and welfare payments.
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Sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you have a full recovery.
I totally agree with everything you’ve written.
It’s a good point about being used to vaccines. In the third world at least there’s a cultural acceptance that vaccines work.
Fighting this disease is like fighting terrorists. You have to be lucking all the time. The terrorist only has to be lucky one.
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