105. Possible futures

On a morning walk on this cloudy day, I thought about me at 22 and a world of possibility–for adventure and good work—and then a Vietnam descent into cynicism about the world and then turning inward to family and close community, things that would sustain me. This morning the future looked something like that.

 

The advent of Covid-19 threw a wrench at the world—and at personal plans. No trip to Turkey; hunkering down, worrying about children, grandchildren, neighbors; reading, thinking, trying to make sense of it all; then hope with the vaccines and the election. 

 

And the coronavirus now spiraling into a descent from hope. Because the numbers remain high even while death numbers decline in the country. Because all of the ideas and powers of modern medicine are running smack into people. 

 

People, institutions, and governments are opening up so that commerce can flow; the deniers and the young and reckless are making up enough of the population to open the way for mutations and new variants. Many will die; but mostly many will get sick. The American deaths will drop as older people are vaccinated or die; younger people will fight through it, maybe have the covid and then a few will have after effects and some of them will get better with the shots. Some middle-aged white Republicans and Evangelicals will get sick and deny it, or think it is God’s will, or take Hydrochlorothiazide or some other remedy and think their recoveries are because of it when in fact it’s just statistics.

 

All the while, even when the numbers of survivors and the vaccinated in our country hits some magical percentage of herd immunity, the rest of the world will struggle with enough vaccines, enough health care, enough of everything necessary in the face of it. Like the bulge in a carnival balloon, there will be quiet places where lockdowns and vaccinations squeeze, and bubbles in the big world where there is not “enough.”

 

The coronavirus will squeeze into all the easy spots, rumbling along for three or four years as did the 1918 flu, until it gets tired enough to retreat. Those of us in the lucky world will take our annual shots as we do our flu shots. Vaccinators will win the battle, as they did with smallpox and might soon with polio; or three or four generations forward there will be enough inherited immunity to render this covid non-lethal, like chickenpox or syphilis.

 

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