Changing horses for the Apocalypse
So, is COVID over?
It sure was looking that way. The numbers said the spike had spiked. Cases were declining. Hospitals were emptying. Cities were looking to drop mas mandates and it seemed just a matter of time before we’d all be breathing on each other again.
Not only that, the bug seemed to be bugging us less severely. Despite the bare-faced lies of the anti-vaxxers, folks who’d gotten the recommended three jabs in the arm who had a close encounter of the ‘rona kind generally reported a case of the sniffles and an excuse to take a few days off. And Unka Sugar was making it even easier to claim those sick days – right there in my kitchen cabinet are my rapid COVID test kits, compliments of the U.S. government, ready to give me an unimpeachable excuse for not going somewhere to do something I’d rather not if the enclosed elixir says so.
And we all were certainly more than ready. More than two years of a news cycle that seemed to be all COVID all of the time really was straining our short American attention spans. It seemed to be long past time for Pestilence to back off and give the other three apocalyptic horsemen a shot at the headlines. Time to let some other existential disaster go viral.
But just as we were about to drop our masks and meet each other face to face … well, maybe not so fast.
First there’s the news out of Buckingham Palace that the queen’s come down with the COVID sniffles. Then, while it’s still not certain that God’s going to save the long-lived queen, there’s bad news from the Twin Cities’ sewers.
What other kind of news do we expect from sewers?
It seems that folks who monitor such things have discovered another viral variant lurking in the metro muck … the BA.2 subvarient of the Omicron variant … a new version of our old nemesis that may be half again as catchy as the one that most recently threatened to shut the world down all over again.
Finding it in the sewer is worrisome since there’s only one way for it to get there.
Yeah, just as we thought it was safe to go out in public…
Then again, maybe it is. Sorta.
Yeah, sorta. Safe has always been a relative thing. Always will be. It may well be -- and in my darker more fatalistic moments I’m sure of it – that COVID 19 is about to join the pantheon of ails lurking out there in the outer darkness just waiting for a chance to do us in. I’d say it is to our relative good fortune that this latest infectious interloper appears to be significantly less deadly than cancer, typhoid or the bubonic plague, though carrying a far higher rate of mortality than toenail fungus, jock itch or swollen hemorrhoidal tissues. It’s looking more like it’s going to be always with us -- one more sniffly, hacking reminder of our inevitable mortality. One more thing to catch us when we’re not ready.
Odd as it may seem, that might turn out to be the good news we’ve been looking for since the virus locked us down, masked us up and kept us apart two years ago. The polio virus is still out there, but we have a vaccine. The measles virus is out there, but we have a vaccine. Mumps, whooping cough, tetanus … all still around, but of little concern because we’ve been vaccinated.
And we have a vaccine for COVID. Get vaccinated and a deadly pandemic is pretty much reduced to the occasional case of the sniffles rather than the potential harbinger of pending demise. It’s still our best shot at getting back to normal…and staying there.
We can live with that.