167.. War and Pandemic

War and Pandemic

 

The threat of war in Ukraine has pushed Covid from the headlines. It makes me think about the Influenza epidemic of 1917-18 and the first World War, when Armistice celebrations at war’s end fueled an influenza surge.   

 

But there are so many differences between then and now: the vaccines, rapid communication, and the fact that this Covid seems to like older people best. Many of those who’ve died have been in nursing homes and assisted living places. Children and the young and healthy seem to do better with it.

 

Which is one reason that people are sliding into one form and another of “normalcy”—the power of prediction made possible by rapid communication and statistics being another.  States are announcing lifting mask requirements on the basis of statistics and hospitalization rates. Oregon’s indoor mask mandate will end on or before March 31; Washington’s is set for March 21. It’s amazing that these predictions can be as accurate as they are—Omicron peaked as we were told it would.

 

War still hovers—over and around Covid as did the 1917 Influenza. That pandemic’s special trick was to attack people in the prime of life, in their teens and twenties. It followed the troops, jumped the trench lines, and made its way around the world. Troops were great carriers, and when the men came home from war and the population celebrated, the Influenza virus did the same.

 

War, and near-war, seem to be everywhere. Not only in Ukraine and Belarus, but in Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen. Meanwhile, refugees are spilling from their homes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from conflicts and droughts in Africa and South and Central America. 

 

And the virus, Covid, snakes its way through all of these places, mutates and moves more quickly. Maybe it made a bad move with Omicron, increasing its infection rate but decreasing its severity. That, and the vaccinations, seem to be slowing Covid down. I wonder what it—the virus—will do to adapt? Will it be satisfied with “endemic”? Or will it mutate again, aim itself at younger people who can carry it further faster? 

 

Or will its impact pale or lose itself in the greater costs of war, refugees, and starvation. The word is that 1 million Afghans will die of starvation this winter. 

 

There are no vaccines for war or starvation. 

 

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