Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Rebecca of Conifer P.T. Stretches. New exercises. Shirley Septic Trash. Goodbye Mountain Waste. Bread Lounge Sourdough bread. Evergreen farmer’s market. Grant Property Medics. Money. Ruby. Kepler and Rigel.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good bread.

Post-pandemic life. For those with vaccines. In countries where vaccines exist in large numbers. Getting back to it. Mussar without masks. Dinner at a friend’s sans masque. Going into the grocery store. Talking with Eduardo yesterday evening. Feeling good.

Not really post-pandemic though. The Delta Variant (a movie thriller title?) will chew through red states where enforced ignorance has replaced any need for public policy. Just say no to the 2020 election results. Support your local klan.

Ignorance of the law, the laws of epidemiology in this instance, will not be an excuse when the virus comes to call. Sickness and death will follow. A sad story in the Washington Post a couple of days ago about nurses in Appalachian critical care units. Patients dying of covid saying it was the flu. Their families devastated, not sure what happened. The nurses standing in grocery store lines hearing people joke about the hoax of covid. Unmasked. A woman quoted in the article saying that it was public knowledge covid was really a way for doctors and hospitals to make more money.

And those countries that can’t afford the vaccines. Poor India. A quote from today’s New York Times:

“Another wave of the pandemic is hitting many parts of the world, with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America experiencing their highest caseloads, driven in part by the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus.”

No. It may seem like a post-pandemic world for those of us with our filled out vaccines cards and the Pfizer or Moderna or Johnson and Johnson shots ramping up our immune responses, but we’re experiencing a privilege of the developed world. Of course, 45 did try to match our treatment of the virus to the worst places in the world: Brazil, India, South Africa, Chile, Mongolia. An election intervened and a determined 46 has put us in a much better place. Thank him and mRna.

Intersectionality. Often the study of race, class, and gender bias as they interweave. Covid’s intersections add another to the mix: the politicized anti-science response to the politicized pro-science response. With mask policies in retreat around the country the guidance is that those unvaccinated need to wear masks. The rest of us, the vaccinated, the saved, no.

Does anybody believe those unvaccinated by choice will wear masks? I don’t. Which makes it hard to impossible to know who’s unmasked thanks to immune responses and those unmasked due to Trump induced brain trauma.

An interesting graphic from the Economist suggests that being out of the house and shopping has edged close to pre-pandemic levels in a sample of 50 countries. On the other extreme attendance at sports events, flying, and movie going remain severely affected.

We will never regain the old normal. A new normal, yes, but not the old one. What will change? Hard to know for sure but it’s clear the nature of work and where work happens will be one. Grieving families, nations will have to reorient themselves after great loss. Travel may change, too. Some believe business travel will never resume its former pace. mRna vaccines may provide a new frontier in the fight against viral illnesses, especially the seasonal flu.

I want to know what you think. What will change, what will remain the same?