99. A whimper

A year ago, yesterday’s 785 Covid deaths would have startled. In a few days, in March of 2020, we would see 1000 deaths, and within weeks 2000 daily deaths. Now, it feels like we are on a downward slope, wrapped up in discussions fragmented by time, place, and community about vaccines and their efficacy, school openings, the need for masks and distancing, and concerns about weather, water, and power.

 

News stories about the Covid toll on health care workers, teenage anxieties, and rising rates of domestic violence flitter across the pages and screens—a shout here; a gasp there. I’m reminded of my own year-ago reading about the 1918 Influenza—and by a story in yesterday’s paper—how the history of that earlier pandemic got lost in the ending of WW I. Soldiers were welcomed home with parades; monuments and memorial cemeteries were built; a national holiday asserted. Those who died of the influenza were quietly mourned in scattered homes and towns across the country. The influenza quietly slipped from national consciousness. 

 

I feel that happening now, even as I write this. No bell rang this morning; I felt no urge to note the extraordinary sacrifices of doctors and nurses, to recount a sad story of isolation and depression. 

 

It feels instead like a huge national whimper that is infecting me as it is the governors of Texas and Mississippi who are “opening” their states, the white Republicans who are refusing to be vaccinated, and the thousands of “long-haulers” who are trading vitamin and physical therapy recipes among themselves, wanting desperately to be over it. I got my second shot; I told you about that last week.

 

My One Minute musings over the last several months is a diary. Will I pick it up and try to make sense of my own journey this pandemic year? I don’t know. Will I continue to find things to write about the pandemic? Not sure.

 

Right now, it’s a whimper…

 

# # #